*clears throat*
OH MY GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE IT WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY TURN OF EVENTS… et cetera et cetera.
At the third round of the French Grand Prix in Metz, Alex Yee lost a major triathlon for the first time in 2023. Let’s first be sensible about this. Yee still finished 2nd and was only 2 seconds away from matching the field-leading run split of the race winner, Matthew Hauser.
To his credit, Hauser had a fantastic race. He carried his form from WTCS Montreal to make it wins over consecutive weekends. Once again, he was towards the front of the field in the swim. In contrast to Montreal, he then seized the initiative on the bike by breaking away with Kenji Nener. Being cognizant of Yee’s presence in the field, the break made a lot of sense and was executed beautifully. However, Hauser also was the fastest runner of the day.
As such, there is a strong case to be made that he could have beaten Yee with or without the break.
Hauser also already has a silver medal from WTCS Yokohama and is well-placed in the WTCS standings. Over the second half of season, then, the Australian has firmly placed himself in the conversation for the world title.
If it is clear that his win in Metz can only really be a good sign for Hauser, what does Yee’s race mean?
A silver medal and a fast run split are promising returns. Moreover the likelihood is that Yee arrived in a similar manner to Hayden Wilde at the previous round in Bordeaux: unrested and beat-up from training. In Bordeaux, Wilde got away with it whereas Yee did not. By contrast, Hauser was coming off of WTCS Montreal so would not have been quite as deep into a training block. The travel back over the Atlantic would also have lent a day or two of recovery.
In reality, then, there is no real reason to panic on Yee’s behalf. It was one race and it probably won’t count for much going forward.
And yet… momentum matters.
Yee has been fantastic in the WTCS this year. An imperious display in Abu Dhabi preceded another display of his current supremacy over Wilde in Cagliari. His rivals, though, will take plenty of positives from Metz.
The first point is that, once again, Yee showed his susceptibility to breakaways. At WTCS Bermuda and WTCS Abu Dhabi last year, he suffered his only defeats on the back of breakaways. Without any breakaways this season, Yee has won both of his races. Now consider how Hauser beat him in Metz.
The breakaway remains the most obvious way to beat Yee. It is incredibly difficult to pull off, especially on the WTCS stage. But it can be done. Hauser has proven the method once again and others should seek to follow his example.
The second point concerns Hauser himself. Inconsistency was a slight issue last year but he seems to have put that to bed in 2023. As already stated, momentum matters and now he will head to WTCS Hamburg in less than two weeks with back-to-back wins. Crucially, Hamburg is the venue at which he won his first WTCS medal in 2022.
With history at the race, Hauser will be confident of another big showing.
Should he succeed in carrying his form, and maybe even win again, suddenly Hauser will be in the box seat to push for the world title. In a matter of weeks, he could well go from medal contender to potential world champion. Once a train like that builds up a head of steam, it is hard to stop.
The third and final point concerns Yee’s momentum. In triathlon, there are plenty of opportunities to race yet precious few ultimately count. The likes of Yee, Wilde and Hauser obviously have aspirations to win the world title. That gives them four scoring races in the WTCS plus the Series Final.
As already shown by Wilde in Abu Dhabi, it is best to budget additional races into one’s plan should something go wrong. Yee, however, has just pulled out of WTCS Sunderland and as a result has no room for error over the rest of his season. He must be perfect in Hamburg and at the Olympic Test Event in Paris to set himself up for a tilt at the world title in Pontevedra.
Last year, counting on the bare minimum of races did not pay off.
Henceforth Yee will go into the latter half of the season in the knowledge that he cannot afford a mistake if he wants to win the world title and that his rivals are rising; the Brit suddenly finds himself under far greater pressure than before.
In the space of a weekend, then, the conversation has transformed from questioning whether Yee can be beaten to acknowledging that he walks a precarious tight-rope.
Of course, the argument can be made that the WTCS title does not matter to Yee and Olympic gold is what counts. Everything he is doing this year is therefore geared with Paris in mind. Kristian Blummenfelt’s coach essentially said that is how the Norwegian’s year will go. Publicly, at least, that is a line that any athlete could take.
Deep down, though, everyone wants to be world champion.
After this weekend, maybe we saw the turning point in which the beginning of the end started for Yee’s world title hopes. Equally, maybe we didn’t. The key point, though, is that seeds of doubt now exists where little did before. And such seeds grow fast.
