Category: WTCS

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…

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…

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…

The WTCS Final in Pontevedra came to life in ways few would have imagined going into the event. The men’s in particular confounded expectations and produced the most exhilarating contest of the season. With minimal technical or topographical challenges on the course, the nature of the racing was almost entirely a product of the aggressive and smart moves by those at the front of the race. In this article, we will examine how the men’s and women’s races came together and unpack the details that made them so exciting. Swim…

Swim Matthew Hauser was a man on a mission in the swim at WTCS Pontevedra. He took control of the race early on and led for practically the entirety of the 1500. He was the first man out of the water and the only one to dip under 18 minutes; his final time was 17:57. Much of the drama that followed came from Hauser stretching the field. The likes of Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde lost around 50 seconds to the Australian which changed the complexion of the race and,…

There were no WTCS debuts in Pontevedra which makes sense given that the WTCS rankings determined the start list. What was a little more surprising was the fact that only two athletes managed to achieve a personal best WTCS finish at the race. Moreover, there was not a single personal best finish in the men’s event. All of the men’s podium had hitherto won a race. Coninx had two previous WTCS wins to his name, Tim Hellwig won in Hamburg in 2021 and Pierre Le Corre memorably triumphed in Sunderland…

Unlike the men’s competition, the women’s WTCS retained a semblance of order in Pontevedra. There would be no shocks, no upsets, simply an overpowering display of excellence from the new world champion, Beth Potter. With her win at the WTCS Final, Potter added 1250 points to her total, ending the season with 4559 points. Pontevedra was her fourth win of the year, after victories in Abu Dhabi, Montreal and Paris. A silver medal in Hamburg then completed what had been a near-perfect season. Having led going into the Final, Cassandre…