The World Triathlon Championship Series is used to determine the World Champion for the year although at times it can be a little tricky to figure out how the system works.
When does the season run?
The 2022 season has been contested from September 2021 through to November 2022. The anomaly of racing taking place in 2021 was caused by delays to the races in Hamburg and Abu Dhabi in 2021 which, for pandemic-related reasons, had to be postponed.
In addition to the two 2021 races, there have been a further six WTCS races in 2022: Yokohama, Leeds, Montreal, Hamburg, Cagliari and Bermuda. The Final of the season will take place in Abu Dhabi.
This season has therefore been unconventional insofar that athletes have raced at the same location twice, as well as racing across two calendar years.
How do the points work?
From the eight WTCS races, athletes can use their four best results towards their WTCS score. 1000 points are awarded for winning a WTCS race, with the points dropping in increments of 7.5% with each position (so 2nd place receives 925 points, 3rd place receives 856, and so on).
The Final of the season in Abu Dhabi will be worth extra points and is the fifth and final race in which athletes can score points towards their total. At the Final, the race winner can earn 1250 points (an increase of 25% over a standard WTCS race). Again, the points drop incrementally by 7.5% per position from 1st place.
After the Final in Abu Dhabi, then, the World Champion will almost certainly come from the athlete with four race scores plus a Final score. If an athlete wins every race they enter, the best score they can end with is 5250 points.
There are, however, a couple of other aspects to factor into calculating an athlete’s WTCS score.
If an athlete fails to finish within 8% of the race winner’s time at a WTCS event, they do not receive any points for their race. This 8% cut-off applies to both the men’s and women’s races. For example, if the winner of an Olympic distance WTCS race finishes in 1 hour 50 minutes exactly, an athlete would have to finish in less than 1 hour 58 minutes 48 seconds to be within the cut-off. Theoretically, an athlete could finish 10th but miss the cut-off and therefore score no points, however that would be a freak occurrence. The cut-off generally applies to athletes finishing further down the field.
Do non-WTCS races count?
This is another important point to note. In the 2022 season, Continental Championships can be used as one score in an athlete’s WTCS total. The Continental Championships include European Championships, Asian Championships, Oceanian Championships, African Championships and the Americas Championships and must have taken place over the Olympic distance.
The winner of a Continental Championships can earn a maximum WTCS score of 400 points, less than half of what a WTCS win would earn. However, there is a complication when it comes to this point.
World Triathlon then apply a Quality of Field Factor and Top 5 Bonus to Continental Championships which affects the points received. What does this look like in practice? To take two examples, when Leo Bergere won the 2022 European Championships in Munich, he received 650 points towards the WTCS whereas when Jawad Abdelmoula won the 2022 African Championships in Agadir he received 510 points.
As Bergere has 4 higher scoring events from WTCS races, his European Championships result ultimately does not count towards his total. Abdelmoula’s African Championships result, though, does count towards his total as one of his four best results.
With only the Final in Abu Dhabi to come, the season in 2022 is almost over and most athletes have achieved their four race quota. All they can do now is race in Abu Dhabi and hope that their performance will be enough to earn enough points to move up the final WTCS rankings.
