Category: Analysis

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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Triathlons are notoriously difficult to compare. From different courses, profiles, and occasionally idiosyncratic measurements, there are plenty of factors that converge to make any comparison rather limited. Throw in the variance in participants and it very quickly looks like a futile pursuit. However, there is nonetheless a way to compare the relative strength of a field against another. Borrowing from the index system of the French federation, every race can be assigned a score based on the world rankings of those starting. Namely, the rankings of those in the top-8…

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Earlier this week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed that Russia will be allowed to race under neutral colours at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Strict eligibility conditions will be in place. For example, any athlete that has actively supported the war in Ukraine will not be allowed the compete. In the wider picture, though, Russian and Belarusian athletes will be at the Games next summer. The question to be asked here is what this means for triathlon. In April of this year, World Triathlon lifted its ban on Russian…

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