Category: Analysis

Debuts As was case at WTCS Yokohama, there was only one debutant at WTCS Cagliari. Making her first start in the Series was Australian athlete Ellie Hoitink. Hoitink claimed the Oceania title over the Olympic distance earlier in the season, her first international win, and she was among the leading women from the continent in Cagliari. Only World Cup winners Sophie Linn (20th) and Nicole Van Der Kaay (27th) surpassed Hoitink’s finish of 29th. With Linn being the only Australian woman to beat Hoitink in Cagliari too, the latter may…

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At the Paris Olympic Games, two slots in the men’s and women’s triathlon races will be reserved for the Universality pathway. These are allocated by the Tripartite Commission and are open primarily to countries that have traditionally sent small delegations to the Games. To receive a slot, an athlete’s federation must have applied for the berth and the athlete in question needs to make it into the top-180 of the world rankings. The Tripartite Commission will then finalise their consideration of the applications and distribute the slots. Similarly to the…

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Swim Therese Feuersinger was in a league of her own in the swim in Chengdu. She claimed the top split in 19:19 and was long out of sight by the time the next athletes followed her into T1. That Feuersinger led out of the water should be of little surprise; she was the fastest woman in the first discipline at WTCS Sunderland last year. What did surprise, though, was just how far ahead she pulled away from her rivals. Wen Wei was the next woman out of the water in…

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Swim Sophie Howell and Emma Jeffcoat shared the top split of the day as they emerged in 8:37. One interesting point was just how much faster the sea swim was in Wollongong than at the Napier World Cup earlier in the year. In Napier, the top women’s time was a 9:54, highlighting the dramatic effect conditions and wearing a wetsuit (and possibly course measurement) can have on the eventual times. The next quickest women were Sian Rainsley and Tara Sosinksi. They completed the 750m in 8:40 while Tereza Zimovjanova was…

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When WTCS Abu Dhabi was cancelled at the start of March, there was a hole in the international triathlon calendar. After months of delicate planning, the best-laid designs of athletes, coaches and federations alike suddenly had to be shelved and redrawn. Most significantly, the cancellation sounded the starting gun on the scramble that followed. For a variety of reasons – such as in service of Olympic qualification or simply getting their season started – those that had been due to race in Abu Dhabi rushed to find alternative races. World…

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Swim Some athletes fared better than others in the choppy sea conditions in Napier. In the men’s race, Alessio Crociani was the only man to break under the 9 minute barrier as he led the way in a time of 8:59. The home duo of Dylan McCullough and Tayler Reid were the next out, with the former being right on Crociani’s heels. Brandon Copeland followed in a time of 9:09 while the bronze medallist, Alberto Gonzalez Garcia, was one of three men to exit in 9:10 (the other two were…

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Winning Olympic gold is extraordinarily difficult. More people climbed Mount Everest in 2023 alone (600 summits by 250 clients and 350 sherpas) than the number of athletes that can win an Olympic triathlon gold medal in the 21st century. When viewed in the bigger picture, the demands of timing and then producing one’s top performance on a given day in a four year cycle are brutal. Winning the WTCS is a different challenge. Rather than peaking on a single day, an athlete must be at their best across an entire…

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It takes a special athlete to make it to the front of the field in the WTCS. The speed required to fight for medals on the run can be dizzying at times and only a select few can find that rare gear. Of the current cohort of WTCS stars, Cassandre Beaugrand leads the way as the second fastest woman of all time in the Series. Her performances in Cagliari in 2022 and 2023 earned her the third and fourth quickest Olympic distance WTCS splits ever. To go with that, she…

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It feels like we are in a golden era when it comes to the running speeds seen in the men’s WTCS. The last couple of years have stood witness to some of the most spectacular run splits in WTCS history and the boundaries of what is possible in the sport are being redrawn. Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde are at the forefront of this bright new future. Between them, they logged the two quickest WTCS run splits ever over the Olympic distance in Cagliari last year. Further behind, the previously…

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