The stage had been set and the athletes brought the music.
After a season in which Flora Duffy and Georgia Taylor-Brown have scaled fantastic heights, the WTCS Final arrived in Abu Dhabi. Both women arrived with three WTCS wins to their name in the 2022 season. Both arrived knowing that only by beating the other could they hope to take the world title.
As expected in the course preview, the top-10 women took up the right hand side of the pontoon at the start of the race and it was Duffy who initially set the pace. After the first swim lap, Taylor Knibb bounced out of the water first but Duffy was close behind. Towards the end of the second lap, Duffy overtook Knibb and began to flex her muscles.
One point to note is that the women’s field did not manage to match Bianca Seregni’s fastest swim from earlier in the day in the U23 race.
Nonethelss, led by Duffy, a group of 9 women raced out of T1. Taylor-Brown and Duffy had not been more than a few seconds apart at this point. The main group consisted of Duffy, Taylor-Brown, Knibb, Beth Potter, Maya Kingma, Vittoria Lopes, Laura Lindemann, Lena Meissner and Lisa Tertsch. Taylor Spivey and Kirsten Kasper formed a small duo behind but the front group applied relentless pressure and gained over two minutes over the main pack.
One by one, athletes slipped from the lead group. Tertsch went first. Spivey and Kasper seemed particularly unimpressed when they picked up Tertsch and she opted to sit on their wheels. So they dropped her.
Lindemann slipped off the pace next as Knibb ratcheted up the pace. It was then that Duffy launched an attack on the bike and all eyes turned to Taylor-Brown. As she has been all season, though, Taylor-Brown was equal to the challenge and covered the move.
With Lindemann dropped, the second battle in the lead group looked to be Potter against Knibb for the third spot on the Series podium. That was until misfortune struck Potter and she fell behind to be eventually swept up by the group of Lindemann, Spivey and Kasper.
It was then that something strange appeared in the live timing.
Both Duffy and Kingma were issued with swim behaviour penalties worth 15 seconds. Suddenly, it seemed the complexion of the race had changed. Would Duffy attack on the bike or early in the run?
Curiously, for whatever reason, Duffy’s penalty vanished soon after whereas Kingma’s remained in place. Notably, Duffy’s penalty was not announced by the commentary team at the same time the Kingma penalty was noted. The impression thus was either that a mistake had been made or that the penalty was being swept under the rug.
Before the ramifications of the penalty could be fully considered, a crash in the main pack drew focus away as Charlotte McShane lost her front wheel round an extremely tight corner. Amidst such a big pack, there was nowhere for her to go.
Only one lap later, Knibb fell foul of the exact same corner, sliding out and sending Kingma catapulting over her. Luckily no one was hurt and both Knibb and Kingma carried on.
That left a front group of four: Duffy, Taylor-Brown, Meissner and Lopes.
Coming into this race, Meissner’s previous best WTCS finish was her 11th place recently in Bermuda. Lopes, meanwhile, logged her previous best finish in Leeds in 2019 where she came 8th. Both athletes rode exceptionally well to keep contact with Taylor-Brown and Duffy and the quartet arrived into T2 together.
Instantly, Taylor-Brown stole a couple of seconds and built a small lead. Duffy, however, was patient. Over the first of the four run laps, she hunted Taylor-Brown down until they drew level at the start of the second lap. As Meissner collected ice packs, she consolidated her grip on 3rd.
For the second lap, Duffy and Taylor-Brown went stride for stride, daring one another to attack. It was on the third lap that Duffy launched her devastating kick. The gap did not quite form at first, but then the elastic tying Taylor-Brown to Duffy snapped. By the end of the third lap, Duffy’s lead was 25 seconds.
As Knibb overtook Lopes for 4th, Leonie Periault and Emma Lombardi ran through from the main pack.
All eyes were on Duffy, though. Her final lap was a procession, a display of utter dominance. When all was said and done, she finished 64 seconds ahead of Taylor-Brown (so any 15 second penalty would not have mattered in the end).
With that Duffy claimed her fourth world title with her fourth win of the season. Meissner held on for a maiden WTCS podium, 2 minutes 35 seconds behind Duffy.
Knibb came home in 4th to secure third in the overall Series while Periault overhauled Lopes for 5th.
Spivey and Lombardi were 7th and 8th while Miriam Casillas Garcia and Cassandre Beaugrand rounded out the top-10.
After an long and arduous season, the athletes can finally rest and none more so than the defending world, Olympic and Commonwealth champion, Flora Duffy.
View the full results here.
