Team Spotlight
Alistair Brownlee OBE: celebrating Alistair's OBE from Prince of Wales
Alistair Brownlee, our Head of Research at Terra, has received his OBE from the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle, for services to triathlon and charity.
Alistair Brownlee, our Head of Research at Terra, has received his OBE from the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle, for services to triathlon and charity.
Two Olympic golds. London 2012 and Rio 2016. The first athlete to win two individual Olympic titles in triathlon. And years of work helping children get into sport.
Very well deserved.
The honour was announced in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours. You can see him receiving it in the coverage here.
The triathlon career behind the OBE
Most people know Alistair through the Olympics. Across an 18-year professional career, he became one of the most successful athletes in the sport, and brought a lot of people into triathlon along the way. His results speak for themselves.
The Brownlee Foundation: free triathlons for children
Through the Brownlee Foundation, which he started with his brother Jonny, he has been giving children the opportunity to try the sport themselves.
The events are free. Bikes and helmets are provided. No previous experience needed, and no timing. Children of all abilities can come through their schools and try swimming, cycling and running.
That matters. You can be inspired by watching someone win at the Olympics, but you still need somewhere to start. The Foundation gives children that opportunity, without requiring their parents to buy equipment or sign them up for a competitive race.
How Alistair came to lead Terra Research
There is also a side of Alistair that you get to know through spending time with him. His depth of knowledge about physiology and human performance is exceptional.
A while back, during our walk at Salesforce Park in San Francisco, he brought up three problems: health insights were surface-level, most health scores weren’t useful for elite athletes, and it was difficult to know whether interventions actually worked.
He was specific about what was missing. Each person is different, yet scores often fail to account for that. Collecting more measurements doesn’t automatically answer whether something is helping you.
That conversation helped us start Terra Research, which he now leads.
What he researches at Terra
His work today covers deep research, on sleep, recovery, performance, and physiology. And he is willing to show where the numbers go wrong.
Some of his research papers include How Accurate Is Your Wearable VO₂max?, Is Parkrun a Better Measure of Fitness Than VO₂ Max?, Late Dinners Raise Your Heart Rate When You Sleep, and Your HRV Recovers at Altitude Before Your Oxygen Does. Practical questions about training and health, investigated with actual data.
He also co-authored our sleep research published in npj Biological Timing and Sleep, a Nature Portfolio journal. The team analysed 185,143 nights across 697 people in 49 countries to understand how sleep changes with daylight and geography.
Congratulations, Alistair
Once you get to know Alistair, you realise how much there is beyond the medals. The knowledge, the curiosity, the pace, the drive, and the work he continues to put into helping people become more active and understand their health.
Proud to work together, and learn from his leadership at Terra Research.
Congratulations, Alistair Brownlee OBE 🎉
