Breakaways on the bike
The last two WTCS races of 2022, in Bermuda and Abu Dhabi, saw ambitious breakaways in both the men’s and women’s fields. At each race, the winner came from those breakaways and we are hoping to see more of this in 2023. We have already anticipated that breakaways may be a little more common next season (you can read more about that here).
Breakaways will require a tactical or philosophical shift for several athletes, primarily the ones that do not have the run speed of the likes of Wilde, Yee, Duffy or Beaugrand. Attacking on the bike might just be their best shot at winning. It will not be required for them to attack every race, but perhaps it is better to go for the daring break and give yourself a chance to win rather than sit in the pack and race for tenth.
We are absolutely not suggesting ganging up on the fastest runners of the field and attacking them on loop. That definitely would not be massively entertaining…
Grand solo breaks can be spectacular. Casper Stornes at WTCS Bermuda in 2018 stands out as a great example, as does Taylor Knibb in WTCS Edmonton in 2021. It can be done.
There is also a place for cunning tactical breaks, like the move by Jumpei Furuya and then Jonathan Brownlee made at WTCS Cagliari. Rather than conceiving the bike as something to simply get through, it can be a free-for-all where attacks abound and the race gets shaken up like a MarioKart race.
Fewer penalties for transition infringements
Let us start by saying there are several infringements that are fair game to punish such as the mount and dismount line on the bike. As briefly entertaining as it was to see Vincent Luis career through transition on his bike in Leeds having miscounted his laps, had other athletes been in transition it would have been a different story altogether. When safety is at stake we cannot complain when rules affect the racing.
Nevertheless, Hayden Wilde’s penalty at the Commonwealth Games is the exact kind of outcome the sport needs to avoid. Races should not be decided on the back of minor infringements. On one the philosophies behind making the sport draft-legal ahead of its inclusion in the Olympics was to avoid an athlete being robbed of gold due to a drafting penalty. Yet now over 20 years later we are seeing exactly that.
Cassandre Beaugrand got away with her penalty at WTCS Leeds courtesy of her superior run, but it is happening a little too often. Flora Duffy also received a penalty in Hamburg that could have jeopardised her shot at the world title.
Maybe there should be a yellow card system for penalties. For the first fault or infringement, the athlete receives only a warning. Upon the second fault the get points deducted from their overall WTCS total or maybe on the second fault the 10 second time penalty can be triggered.
When an athlete offends twice a penalty is a little more justified as they should have been more careful after the first warning.
We want to encourage athletes to push the limits in transition to gain every possible advantage. It makes for better viewing. So let’s not be overly litigious about such minor infractions.
Another tight battle for the overall titles
2022 had some great rivalries with Alex Yee battling Wilde until Leo Bergere stormed home from nowhere to snatch the world title. Likewise, Flora Duffy vying for the world title against Taylor-Brown made for a tense and dramatic finale. It is good for the sport to the stakes to be high going into the WTCS Final. Context is everything in sport and viewers have to know what they are watching has meaning. No one wants to see a coronation.
With Blummenfelt coming back into the mix the men’s field should get even deeper while Cassandre Beaugrand or Taylor Knibb could be the third contender on the women’s side.
If the contest for the overall title can be anything like 2022, we will be in for a treat.
Athletes to race more
In the 2022 season, athletes only had to race 50% of the WTCS season to earn their full quota of points going into the Final in Abu Dhabi.
We want to see as close to 100% race attendance as possible at the WTCS level. Hayden Wilde did not beat Alex Yee in a WTCS race that they both finished last season, but they only actually went head-to-head twice before the Final. It is hard to build up a rivalry off such little confrontation.
With no Commonwealth Games, we can be more confident that the British contingent won’t skip a race like Hamburg in order to prioritise a non-WTCS event. On paper it is not a major deal when one country does this, but when it deprives the race of the likes of Yee, Coldwell and Taylor-Brown, then it matters.
Similarly as much as its important for athletes to focus on earning a livelihood by racing 70.3s or other series, it is better for the WTCS product if the best are racing the Series as much as possible.
Fortunately, there are currently only four WTCS stops scheduled, plus the Olympic Test Event in Paris, before the Final in Pontevedra. With four races counting before the Final (including the Test Event), we should see the best athletes going head-to-head as much as possible.
The return of the parents
There are two athletes to pay particular attention to in 2023: former world champions Mario Mola and Katie Zaferes. Mola made his return to racing in the autumn of 2022 after becoming a father. Zaferes, meanwhile, is on the road back after giving birth to her first child.
Mola won three straight world titles before settling for second overall in 2019. Zaferes was World Champion in 2019, a season in which she rattled off five WTCS wins. She then took bronze at the Tokyo Olympics individually.
If both can return to form and top condition then both will be huge additions to both fields. Mola already looked good in 2022, particularly in the Valencia World Cup.
Nicola Spirig has previously shown that it is possible to return to the top of the sport after childbirth which should give hope to Zaferes that she can return to challenge for wins this year.
The return of Mola and Zaferes does not simply improve the quality of the fields. It also sends an important message to the rest of the field and to the triathlon audience that athletes can afford to be human in the sport and that personal life does not have to come at the expense of their sporting career. There is life after the sport, so whether it means studying or starting a family or any number of things athletes should be reminded that tending to their personal lives will not set them back.
