Year: 2023

Since the start of 2022, Alex Yee’s record in the WTCS reads: seven finishes, five wins, one bronze medal and a 5th place. Two of those wins have come from his two appearances in this year’s Series and he will arrive in Hamburg as the only unbeaten athlete in the Series. However, the term “unbeaten” comes with an asterisk. At the French Grand Prix in Metz, Yee suffered a defeat to Matthew Hauser. The Australian escaped after a fast swim and then kept clear of Yee’s chase pack on the…

With two wins her to name, Beth Potter is enjoying the best season of her (triathlon) career. Victories at WTCS Abu Dhabi and WTCS Montreal have established her at the forefront of the women’s field and marked her out as one of the select few capable of winning the world title. With neither of Sophie Coldwell or Georgia Taylor-Brown racing in Hamburg, Potter is the only 2023 WTCS race winner on the women’s start list. Hamburg also holds happy memories for the Scot. Until Abu Dhabi in March, Hamburg had…

To quote My Chemical Romance, “all teenagers scare the livin’ shit out of me”. Seldom has that quote been more appropriate than when surveying the start lists for the World Junior Championships. This year, the men’s field in Hamburg is ridiculously deep. Before forecasting how the race might pan out, and this goes for the women’s preview too, a massive caveat has to stated in that Juniors are liable to do anything. Someone could pop off out of nowhere and claim the win. Likewise a favourite could have an ill-timed…

Less than a week after last year’s World Junior champion, Tilda Månsson, claimed her second World Cup win, the time has come to determine her successor. In Montreal last season, Månsson’s victory built upon a streak of European success at the World Junior Championships. This year, an early favourite has emerged from the same continent. Margareta Vrablova of Slovakia has been on a tear in 2023. With European Junior Cup golds in Melilla, Quarteira, Olsztyn and Wels, she has been a veritable winning machine. To go alongside those golds, she claimed…

Summer is rarely the season for triathlon in Africa. Between the African Cup in Yasmine Hammamet at the end of May and the African Cup in Monastir in September, only one race on the continent has been pencilled into the schedule. That event came at the weekend with the African Premium Cup in Larache, Morocco. Although no African athletes started in the women’s race, the men’s event saw Badr Siwane of Morocco wear number 1. Against a cosmopolitan field, with all five continental associations represented, Siwane had a challenge on…

Home expectation brings a different kind of pressure. Where Hayden Wilde experienced it when he raced in his homeland at the New Plymouth World Cup back in March, this time it fell to Csongor Lehmann as he led a redoubtable Hungarian team in Tiszaujvaros. Following consecutive European Cup wins in his home town, Lehmann had planted his flag early in the semi-finals to claim the number 1 seed for the final. All he had to do was repeat. With a stacked Hungarian team ready to stop him, not to mention…

Boiled down to its purest form, the women’s final at the Tiszaujvaros World Cup came down to three women. Across the swim, bike and run, each shaped the race and, at separate points, each looked in control of the situation. It was the battle of the three leading ladies that defined Tiszaujvaros. Only one of them, though, could take the win. The first of the women was Bianca Seregni. Heading into the race, the Italian athlete had struggled with injury which had stalled her momentum. However, she had issued a…

From sixty-eight men and fifty-seven women, thirty remained in each of the finals at the European Junior Cup in Tiszaujvaros. After Hungary had swept all five of the heats the day prior, they were the obvious favourites for the wins. Fanni Szalai and Nora Romina Nádas had been dominant on the women’s side, while Márton Kropkó, Zalán Hóbor and Gyula Kovács breezed through the men’s heats. A slightly longer route awaited the athletes in the final. The swim remained the same at 500m. Both the bike and run, though, had…