Year: 2023

For the first time, the comeback trails of Gwen Jorgensen and Katie Zaferes will intersect. Next weekend, two of the biggest names in triathlon will be racing against one another at the Americas Cup in St. Peters, Missouri. Jorgensen announced her comeback late last year having retired in 2016 after winning gold at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. In the intervening years, she raced on the track and in the marathon, hitting a best time of 15:08 in the 5000m. In this new phase of her career, her primary…

The return of Kristian Blummenfelt to the World Triathlon Championship Series has been something triathlon fans around the world have anticipated with bated breath. However, his comeback has yet to truly take off. A silver medal at the Bergen World Cup last August was a promising start. Then came 6th and 8th place finishes at WTCS Bermuda and the WTCS Final in Abu Dhabi, respectively. Both were solid results. Yet when stacked up against his former levels, particularly as an Olympic champion, Series winner and three time WTCS gold medallist,…

For the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, elite international triathlon will return to mainland China as athletes prepare to race the Asia Cup event in Dexing. The last international race that took place in the country was a Winter Triathlon Cup in January 2020. In terms of the standard triathlon format, an Asia Cup in Shantou back in in November 2019 was the last time China featured on the international scene. After hosting the Olympic Games in 2008, Beijing was home to the WTCS Final in…

It have often been the case that after a home Olympics many countries have struggled to replicate their performances at the subsequent Games. With such a close turnaround between the Tokyo and Paris Olympics, Japan will be hoping to buck that trend across all sports. In the triathlon events at the Tokyo Games, Japan was led by Kenji Nener (who finished 14th), Yuko Takahashi (who finished 18th) and a Mixed Team Relay that finished 13th. One of the vital parts of having an even better Games in Paris will be…

At the British performance assessments, Youth and Senior athletes were on show as well as the Juniors. For the full breakdown of how the Juniors performed, click here. Several of the athletes in the Senior category were in their first year out of the Junior ranks. As such, including them in the tests enabled British Triathlon to keep their finger on the pulse of athletes are they progress through the next stages of their careers. Similarly, the Senior field contained a number of athletes that had picked up triathlon a…

The British domestic triathlon calendar commenced at the weekend with the Junior performance assessments. Concurrent tests also ran for Youth and Senior athletes; in this article we will cover the Junior performances while the Youths (also see below) and Seniors will be in a separate piece. As a reminder, the Junior athletes took on a 800m swim on the Saturday. The next day, the Juniors completed a bike-run of 20km and 5km. As anticipated in the preview, reigning British Junior champion Bethany Cook did indeed remain in America where she…

Triathletes here, triathletes there, triathletes everywhere. Such is the way of the modern elite triathlon calendar. While there were Continental Cups taking place in Africa and Asia at the weekend, a number of athletes opted for alternative racing opportunities. Mario Mola After his recent medal at the European Duathlon Championships, Mola was racing again at the Triathlon de Portocolom in Mallorca. The three time world champion took on an irregular set of distances as he raced over a 500m swim, 50km bike and a 5km run in a “55.5” format.…

At the Setubal Triathlon, an elite trio of Portuguese athletes took on the middle distance relay. Under the conditions of the relay, one athlete would swim 1.9km, a second athlete would cycle 90km and then a third would run 21.1km. Taking the win were the “Lidl Stars”. As Lidl was the primary sponsor of the event, it made sense for them to enter a relay of athletes that they support. Two of the Lidl Stars were none other than WTCS athletes Ricardo Batista and Melanie Santos. Mafalda Rosa, the European…