The Tongyeong World Cup comes a week after the Chengdu World Cup and marks the second of the three Asian stops in the autumn block of the circuit.
After France dominated the women’s race last year, with Audrey Merle winning and Mathilde Gautier making the podium, they will have no female representatives this time round. On the men’s side, though, Matthew McElroy is pencilled in to defend the gold medal he won in 2022.
A fast Sprint distance will be on offer as will crucial points towards world and Olympic rankings.
Who’s there?
Australia and Spain will be sending the largest women’s teams to Tongyeong with five athletes apiece.
Jaz Hedgeland and Kira Hedgeland will look to convert their impressive French Grand Prix form into World Cup success for the former. They will be joined by Emma Jackson, Sophie Linn and Ellie Hoitink.
For Spain, World Cup medallist Noelia Juan will lead the way. Miriam Casillas Garcia is on the entry lists although it remains to be seen whether she will race. Maria Casals Mojica, Cecilia Santamaria Surroca and Sara Guerrero Manso complete the Spanish women’s team.
Germany will have three women starting. WTCS medallists Lisa Tertsch and Lena Meißner will look to make the podium, as will Anabel Knoll.
Yuko Takahashi will lead the Japanese team and recently raced well at the French Grand Prix in Saint-Jean-des-Monts. Perhaps the most intriguing name on the start lists, though, is that of her compatriot, Manami Hayashi. Hayashi is the Asian Junior champion and has logged a series of impressive results at Asia Cup races this year. How she handles the step up in level at the World Cup will thus be one of the most interesting sub-plots of the race.
Niina Kishimoto and Hiraku Fukuoka will also start for Japan. Kishimoto will be one to watch in particular after winning multiple Asia Cup races.
Costanza Arpinelli and Angelica Prestia will form a two-woman team for Italy while Eva Goodisson and Ainsley Thorpe will be racing for New Zealand.
Slovakia will be represented by Ivana Kuriackova and Romana Gajdošová. Gajdošová will be looking forward to her return to South Korea; earlier in the season she won a bronze medal at the World Cup in Yeongdo. As such, she will have hopes of claiming a second World Cup medal.
Lisa Perterer is also racing having medalled at the Weihai World Cup. Tanja Stroschneider will race in the Austrian colours alongside her.
Beth Potter is scheduled to race for Britain, although it seems a little unlikely that she will actually start. The likelier outcome is that someone is substituted in to race alongside the second Brit, Hollie Elliott.
Luxembourg and Poland will also be sending two women to Tongyeong. Jeanne Lehair and Eva Daniels are due to start for the former while Paulina Klimas and Magdalena Sudak are in line to race for the latter.
A talented cohort including Claire Michel, Margot Garabedian, Ekaterina Shabalina, Julie Derron and Erica Ackerlund will be the sole female representatives for their country.
As already noted, Matthew McElroy will be one of the leading names in the men’s field and will look to defend his gold medal. However, he will face a stern challenge from his teammates, let alone the rest of the field.
Morgan Pearson will be racing after his win at the Karlovy Vary World Cup. Furthermore John Reed will be racing having won the Americas Championships recently. Darr Smith then completes the American squad.
Adrien Briffod will look to recapture the form that saw him finish 6th at WTCS Yokohama and 3rd at the European Games earlier in the year. The Swiss men’s team will be bolstered by the presence of Max Studer, Simon Westermann and Fabian Meeusen.
Jacob Birtwhistle will lead the Australian men’s team after winning a bronze medal at the French Grand Prix in Quiberon at the start of September. His teammate, Brandon Copeland, has been similarly impressive in recent French Grand Prix events and could thrive over the Sprint distance in South Korea.
Oscar Dart will be racing after winning Asia Cup events this year while Luke Willian and Callum McClusky will present significant threats.
Heading up a large Canadian contingent is Tyler Mislawchuk. Most notably, all four of his teammates have won Continental Cups this year. Between them, Aiden Longcroft-Harris, Liam Donnelly, Martin Sobey and Jeremy Briand have each won an Americas Cup. If they can translate that form, any one of them could find themselves in the fight for a medal.
The European champion, David Castro Fajardo, will be joined by WTCS medallist Antonio Serrat Seoane and World Cup medallists Sergio Baxter Cabrera and Alberto Gonzalez Garcia on the Spanish team.
After winning a bronze medal at the Weihai World Cup and a silver medal at the Valencia World Cup, Lasse Nygaard Priester will hunt his elusive gold medal in Tongyeong. With Jonas Schomburg, Simon Henseleit, Tim Hellwig and Valentin Wernz for company, he will be a part of a formidable German team.
Dylan McCullough, Saxon Morgan and Trent Thorpe will form the New Zealand men’s team while Britain have entered Alex Yee, Jonathan Brownlee and Jack Willis. As with Potter in the women’s race, look for Yee and Brownlee to be substituted out.
The European Super Sprint champion, Ricardo Batista, is one of the more prominent names among those to be the only individuals racing for their country. Felix Duchampt will be the only Romanian athlete starting, Casper Stornes will be the only athlete from Norway and Maxime Hueber Moosbrugger will be the sole French athlete in Tongyeong.
Main talking points
Knoll to reset
Anabel Knoll dropped out of WTCS Pontevedra earlier this week, citing her health as the reason. Since a crash at the European Championships in Munich last summer, she has struggled with a litany of issues and has not been able to train or race at her normal level.
For much of 2022, Knoll established herself in the top-10 of the WTCS and will be itching to return to such highs.
In her announcement of her withdrawal, she accepted that pulling out from Pontevedra all but ended her aspirations of going to the Olympic Games next summer. At the same time, she noted that she was trying to make the best of the situation and aimed to end the season as well as possible.
To that end, she will look ahead to the October World Cups which will mainly consist of Sprint events. As she looks to regain her fitness and form, Knoll could be one to watch over the coming weeks.
The Beisenbayev-Ng showdown
The race to the Olympic Games takes many paths. Some of the best contests can be found in the competition for a New Flag slot.
One New Flag place will be awarded to each of the five continental associations (Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas) and will go to the best ranked male and female athletes from a country that has not already earned an Olympic slot.
The men’s race for the Asian slot will be at the fore in Tongyeong. Ayan Beisenbayev of Kazakhstan currently is in line to take the place. He is ranked 76th in the world (New Flags can be determined using World Rankings rather than Olympic Rankings). Right behind him, though, is Jason Tai Long Ng of Hong Kong.
Ng is ranked 85th and only requires a couple of big results to overtake his rival. Having finished 3rd at the Asian U23 Championships and 7th at the Weihai World Cup, Ng has been gaining ground on Beisenbayev.
It will therefore be worth keeping an eye on how their Olympic battle unfolds in South Korea.
The Tongyeong path to WTCS success
A recent trend has started to emerge around the autumn World Cup stops in Asia and, more specifically, with the Tongyeong World Cup.
In 2021, Jawad Abdelmoula won in Tongyeong. The next summer, he claimed a maiden WTCS medal in Hamburg. Moreover, the women’s winner in 2021 was Beth Potter. After her Tongyeong gold medal, she went on to earn her first ever WTCS medal in 2022.
Annika Koch then upheld the trend in 2022. Having won a silver medal in Tongyeong, she achieved her first WTCS podium in Sunderland this year.
The gold and bronze medallists from the women’s field in 2022, Merle and Gautier, have not been able to start in the WTCS due to nature of French system. Gautier, though, went on to win European Super Sprint title this summer. Her triumph therefore builds upon the nascent pattern that success in Tongyeong begets success the next season.
Of course, this is a small sample size. The 2019 medallists also did not go on to 2020 success due to the cancellation of the season. Matthew McElroy, the winner in 2019 and 2021, also skews the men’s field a little as he was already a WTCS medallist before his wins. However, it is nonetheless notable that success in Tongyeong has appeared to precede a maiden WTCS medal.
It could be the case that a late-season success, such as a medal in Tongyeong, provides the perfect confidence boost into the off-season and enables an athlete to build over the winter. It could equally be nothing more than coincidence. Still, for those starting this year perhaps it will be reassuring to think that success in Tongyeong could lead to even greater success in 2024.
View the full start lists here.
