Category: WTCS

Five Things We’d Like To See In The WTCS In 2024

Benjamin Eastman

Aggressive swimming When considering what we would like to see in the WTCS in 2024, it is perhaps best to start with the most recent instalment of the Series. At WTCS Pontevedra, the two men’s favourites to win the world title, Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde, lost time in the swim and found themselves on the back foot as they headed into T1. This changed the dynamic of the race and laid the foundations for a dramatic upset. Looking ahead to next year, it is clear that a swim-centric strategy…

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The Fastest Women’s WTCS Run Splits Of All Time After 2023

Benjamin Eastman

Triathlon is getting ever quicker. In 2023, four women ran under 33 minutes at an Olympic distance WTCS race and the level required to medal, let alone win, is constantly evolving. Here, we take a look at how the top splits of 2023 stack up against the fastest run splits of all time in the WTCS. Olympic distance Gwen Jorgensen remains the only woman to have run under 32 minutes in a WTCS race. Her split of 31:41 from WTCS Stockholm in 2013 remains the gold standard and, as yet,…

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The Fastest Men’s WTCS Run Splits Of All Time After 2023

Benjamin Eastman

The 2023 season witnessed the fastest men’s Olympic distance run split in WTCS history. As if that was not enough, the second fastest run split ever was also recorded. After Alex Yee joined the sub-29 minute club in 2022, there were two further splits under the barrier this year. In total, there were three new entries in the all time rankings. Read on to find out how the latest all time rankings look. Olympic distance After scaring the record in 2022, Alex Yee is now the fastest runner in WTCS…

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Who Made The Biggest Improvements From 2022 to 2023?

Benjamin Eastman

Sporting careers rarely follow a straightforward trajectory. For every sudden rise, there is a plateau. For every dip in form, there is a comeback. In every season there are stories of athletes hitting new heights or reattaining levels of years before. In this article, we will delve into the biggest improvements in WTCS finish from 2022 to 2023. For reference to the previous year, you can see the improvements from 2021 to 2022 here. Some of the results represent personal best finishes, the highest that athlete has ever crossed the…

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German Triathlon Union Takes Over WTCS Hamburg From Ironman

Benjamin Eastman

For several years, WTCS Hamburg has been under the purview of the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC, otherwise known as Ironman), a status quo that stood as a relic of a previous relationship between World Triathlon and the WTC. In recent times, though, several WTC-owned WTCS stops have vanished from the schedule. From Stockholm to Gold Coast to Cape Town, to name a few, the WTC had a major presence in the WTCS circuit. Those stops have since disappeared. Indeed today none of Stockholm, Cape Town or Gold Coast are WTCS…

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Comparing the Best WTCS Debuts of 2022 and 2023

Benjamin Eastman

A WTCS debut is what many young triathletes dream of as they imagine their rise through the ranks of the sport. Sometimes, a debut goes swimmingly as athletes break into the top-10 at the first ask, or even win a medal. On other occasions, an athlete can be in for a difficult day. The level in the WTCS is a considerable step above anything a debutant will have usually encountered beforehand, making the first race a baptism of fire. The 2023 season saw several athletes make their first forays into…

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Changes Made To The Start Of The 2024 Triathlon Season

Benjamin Eastman

There has already been movement on the planned schedule for international triathlon in 2024. The first stops of the WTCS and World Cup schedules for next year were announced in September. In the weeks since, new races have been added while previously fixed dates have been changed. World Triathlon have confirmed that WTCS Abu Dhabi has been moved back by a week. It was originally slated to take place between 2-3 March next year. Now it will occur on 8-9 March. As a result, the new Abu Dhabi date will…

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Strategy and the Value of Multiple Threats in the Men’s WTCS

Benjamin Eastman

Yesterday, we introduced the concept of strategy in the WTCS and surveyed the female gold medallists from the current Olympic cycle that could lay claim to being a multi-strategy athlete. The conclusion was that Beth Potter, Flora Duffy and Georgia Taylor-Brown are the three multi-strategy athletes that are currently operating in the women’s Series. As it happens, the trio have also won all four of the world titles since 2020. In this article, we will be turning to the men’s Series and considering which of the WTCS gold medallists in…

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Talking Strategy and Race Approaches in the Women’s WTCS

Benjamin Eastman

There are many ways to skin a cat. Equally, there are several ways to win a WTCS race. Strategy is a slightly under-developed concept in triathlon, in part because in plenty of cases an athlete’s make-up means that they only have one way of succeeding at the top level. All things being equal, the fastest runner in the field does not need to bury themselves in a breakaway to win a race. Moreover, the fast swimmer that lacks running speed will be unlikely to plump for a run-driven strategy. In…

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Breaking Down The WTCS Medal Winners Of 2023

Benjamin Eastman

There are plenty of ways to slice up the WTCS. The points tally is the most obvious way of doing so, although even that can be fiddled with to create new ways of viewing the standings. One of the most basic ways of assessing the season is by looking at the medals won. On the one hand it offers an alternative metric for consistency as well as for who the most dominant athlete could have been. On the other, it also provides a means of assessing the depth of the…

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What If The 2023 Men’s WTCS Had Been Scored Like 2022

Benjamin Eastman

Yesterday we investigated what the women’s 2023 WTCS would have looked like had the 2022 scoring structure been used. Today it is the turn of the men. Unlike 2022, races of different distances were worth different points. A win over the Olympic distance was still worth 1000 points. However, wins over the Sprint and Super Sprint eliminator formats respectively gave 750 and 875 points. Meanwhile, the WTCS Final offered 1250 points to the winner, just as it did in 2022. With the change in scoring, the emphasis in the Series…

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What If The 2023 Women’s WTCS Had Been Scored Like 2022

Benjamin Eastman

At the start of the 2023 WTCS season, World Triathlon announced the new scoring structure for the Series. In a shift from 2022, races of different distances would be worth different points. In a continuation from the season prior, events over the Olympic distance would be worth 1000 points for a win. The WTCS Final would also be worth an additional 25%, with 1250 points being awarded for a victory. However, the Sprint and Super Sprint eliminator races would be of lesser values. In 2022, they had held the same…

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How Beth Potter Became The World Champion In 2023

Benjamin Eastman

Even after winning the opening race of the WTCS season in Abu Dhabi, Beth Potter maintained that she had not yet thought about a potential world title. The sentiment was sensible enough. The end of the season lay a long way down the line and there were plenty of pitfalls that prevented such a counting of the proverbial chickens. And yet, such was the authority with which she won in Abu Dhabi, a statement had been made. On the first weekend of March, Potter planted her flag into the ground…

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How Dorian Coninx Became World Champion In 2023

Benjamin Eastman

Entering the WTCS Final ranked 5th, Dorian Coninx was not many people’s first pick when it came to predicting the 2023 world champion. If momentum counts for anything in elite sport, though, Coninx was a clear example of catching a perfect wave. At the start of the year, in the men’s top-30 rankings, we noted that consistency had been an issue for Coninx in recent times. The double WTCS race winner could appear in red-hot form on one day, as his win at WTCS Montreal in 2021 and medal at…

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