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 the WTCS with varying degrees of success. In this article, we will examine the best debuts of the year and compare them against those of the previous two seasons.
The Best of 2023
In 2023, the best WTCS debut of any athlete came from Maria Carolina Velasquez Soto.
Having won three straight Americas Cup races at the start of the year, she arrived in Montreal in form ahead of her first crack at the Series. In a tight Sprint distance race, Velasquez came away with 10th place. Notably, she crossed the line ahead of WTCS race winners Laura Lindemann and Sophie Coldwell.
Velasquez’s Montreal performance stood as the high point of an otherwise challenging season for debutants. Only one other female athlete, the World U23 champion Selina Klamt, managed a top-30 finish on debut.
Some athletes, like Brea Roderick, have made major strides since their debut. Having logged a solid 34th on debut in Montreal, Roderick improved to 21st at the WTCS Final in Pontevedra. Notwithstanding the improvements that some athletes (like Roderick) made, it was not a season with lots of eye-catching first starts.
One interesting trend is that all bar one of the top-10 women’s debuts in 2023 came in either Montreal or Hamburg. Maria Casals Mojica’s 41st place in Sunderland represented the only top-10 debut from another location.
Meanwhile, the best debut of the men’s field came from Janus Staufenburg. Like Velasquez, Staufenburg stepped up to the WTCS after earning a win in 2023 at the Continental Cup level. He won the Holten European Cup before finishing 27th at WTCS Hamburg.
There were only eight male debutants in 2023. Notably, all eight managed to finish their first race.
As was the case with the women’s debutants, there were not a lot of top-30 finishes (there were two). One case that could be made is that, being the pre-Olympic season, it was a particular tough year to make a WTCS debut. With so many athletes gunning for Olympic qualification and WTCS races offering the most points to that end, the fields were even more packed with talent than usual.
If we compare 2023 to the years that came before, the numbers could bear out the idea that 2023 was a harder year than normal.
How Does 2023 Compare to 2022 and 2021?
To compare the men’s debuts in 2023 to 2022, not only were there fewer debuts in the men’s Series in the former, the average finishing position of the debutants was also slightly lower.
Five men in 2022 had a better debut finish than Staufenburg’s 27th place in Hamburg. At the same time, one thing to note is that 2022 had a particularly strong group of debutants. For example, Sergio Baxter Cabrera (the top debutant with a 14th place in Cagliari) and Jawad Abdelmoula were already World Cup gold medallists. The likes of Michele Sarzilla and Alberto Gonzalez Garcia were also a little older and more experienced than their 2023 counterparts.
The slight difference in profile could be a factor in the different levels of debut performance.
If we compare the 2023 debuts to those of 2022 on the women’s side, no one matched Emma Lombardi’s performance. Her 4th place in Yokohama was a rare feat, especially at such a young age. She did arrive as the reigning World U23 champion, though, so her performance was not entirely out of the blue.
On the 2023 front, Klamt’s debut in Hamburg came before she went on to win the World U23 title. A better comparison between Klamt and Lombardi may therefore come with Klamt’s 2024 performances.
Cathia Schär and Matilda Offord also broke into the top-20 on debut in 2022. Whereas five women made the top-30 at their first race that year, only two did so in 2023.
On the 2022 front, Olympic qualification had started and so there was a broadly similar situation to the 2023 season. On the other hand, all bar two of the top debuts came in the first month of Olympic qualification. Perhaps the scramble for the Olympic Games was not quite as intense at that point as it was in 2023, although that is a vague hypothesis at best.
When it comes to investigating the impact of the pre-Olympic year on debuts, the best point of comparison may be with 2021.
2021 had the combination of being an Olympic year and kick-starting the 2022 season in a unique year. While its unusual nature makes it a little awkward to compare, it contained plenty of debuts from the post-Olympic qualification madness.
With six female top-15 performances on debut, 2021 was quite a year. Mitigation can be raised insofar that Lucy Charles Barclay, the top women’s debutant with a 5th place in Leeds, was not a young athlete in 2021, nor could she be characterised as up-and-coming. Rather, she was a seasoned professional in the long distance circuit.
As impressive performance as her debut was, then, it came from a much more mature and developed athlete than is often the case.
In addition, further mitigation can be offered with the Hamburg 2021 debuts. Due to the fact that the race was rescheduled for after the 2021 season for pandemic-related reasons, it can be argued that the field was not quite as deep as a standard event.
Paul Georgenthum won a WTCS medal in Hamburg on debut but has not really returned to the WTCS since. At the same time, Kate Waugh finished 9th and Lasse Nygaard Priester finished 4th and both have replicated such levels. Indeed, Waugh has since won a WTCS medal.
Beyond the caveats, the key takeaway is that all ten of the top women’s debuts in 2021 finished in the top-25. Only one did so in 2023. Similarly, all ten of the top men’s debuts in 2021 were top-25 finishers. No one matched that feat in 2023.
One approach to explaining this difference could be to focus on the athletes. However, a more convincing explanation may be found in the difference between the pre-Olympic year and the actual Olympic season.
Eight of the top-10 men’s debuts in 2021 and six of the top-10 women’s debuts came after the Tokyo Olympics. At that point, the great pressure of the Olympic cycle had been lifted. The field could collectively breathe and had less pressure to attend races (such as Hamburg). As a result, more spaces were available for debutants to fight for high finishes.
By contrast, with Olympic points and qualification being at such a premium in 2023, the WTCS attracted a full-blooded field at every stop.
Henceforth, while the WTCS debuts in 2023 did not quite match those of the prior two years, the timing of the Olympic cycle may be a significant factor in explaining why.
