Avil led the field throughout the 750 metre swim and stretched her lead in to the bike leg.

 

The chase pack included fellow Britain Kirsty McWilliam and Germany’s Rebecca Robisch.

 

Avil continued to dominate and raced to victory posting the fastest run split.

 

McWilliam battled through and took the bronze medal just behind Robisch.

Avil said: “I didn’t intend to go solo today, but I just got on the bike, put my head down and made a gap.

 

"It was great to finally stand on the top step of the podium at a major championship, especially with Kirsty there along side me.”

In the junior men's competition, Brownlee added another crown to last year’s World Championship title.

 

Exiting the water in the front pack, Brownlee dropped off the back of the group when he clipped a crowd barrier.

 

Regaining control, Brownlee began the run leg on the shoulder of defending champion, Aurelein Raphael from France, but the young Yorkshireman broke away and raced to a convincing victory.

Brownlee said: "I’m delighted with the win.

 

"I’ve had such a bad winter with injury that I needed to come out and show everyone that I was still number one.

 

"The British guys did a great job supporting me on the bike and once I hit the front on the run I knew no one would catch me!”

In the senior races, the British women put new team tactics to good use as Julie Dibens and Abbie Thorrington pushed Andrea Whitcombe and Michelle Dillon to the front of the bike pack ahead of the run.

 

In a race dominated by Portugal’s Vanessa Fernandes, Whitcombe just missed out on the medals by five seconds as she took fourth, with Dillon close behind in sixth.

Tim Don’s hopes for a European gold medal to add to his World Championship victory last year were dashed when he punctured on the bike course.

 

Although he was able to continue with a new wheel he lost 90 valuable seconds on the leaders.

 

Andrew Johns helped pull Don to within 50 seconds of the front athletes ahead of the run, but it was too much to make up as he ran his way into 18th.

The top Briton was world under-23 Champion Will Clarke in 12th, who held off Olly Freeman who finished 14th.

 

Javier Gomez from Spain took victory ahead of the German pairing of Jan Frodeno and Daniel Unger.

Don said: “If I hadn’t punctured I would have been right in the thick of it today,

 

"I’m totally gutted and very frustrated.

 

"AJ (Andrew Johns) did a great job of pulling me up towards the leaders, but there was no way I could have got on the podium having started the run so far down.”