The start lists for the opening race of the 2024 WTCS season have been published and there are several interesting details to note. WTCS Abu Dhabi will be one of three races in the Series to take place before the end of the Olympic qualification window. Moreover, with only five regular season WTCS events taking place this year, it will be an invaluable opportunity to log early points for those with world title ambitions.
While some switching and substituting is par for the course with WTCS start lists, the bulk of the names currently listed will be on the start line when the racing starts next month.
Who’s there?
After swooping to the men’s WTCS title with a dramatic victory in Pontevedra, Dorian Coninx will launch his title defence in Abu Dhabi. Joining him will be the 2022 world champion, Leo Bergere, who will be returning to the sight of his own WTCS Final triumph. Vincent Luis will also be racing while Tom Richard completes the French quartet.
Alex Yee, a triple WTCS race winner in 2023, will also be starting. He will be joined by Barclay Izzard. In addition, Hayden Wilde, a double race winner last season, will be looking to make an early season statement in Abu Dhabi. Dylan McCullough and Tayler Reid make up the rest of the New Zealand men’s team.
Vasco Vilaca and Ricardo Batista will start for Portugal while Kristian Blummenfelt and Vetle Bergsvik Thorn will be racing for Norway.
Both Spain and Germany will be sending five-man squads. The former will be represented by Antonio Serrat Seoane, Roberto Sanchez Mantecon, Sergio Baxter Cabrera, David Castro Fajardo and Alberto Gonzalez Garcia while the latter will send Tim Hellwig, Lasse Lührs, Jonas Schomburg, Lasse Nygaard Priester and Simon Henseleit.
Kenji Nener will lead a Japanese quartet consisting of Ren Sato, Makoto Odakura, Aoba Yasumatsu. Csongor Lehmann will likewise lead a Hungarian foursome that also contains Márk Dévay, Bence Bicsák and Gábor Faldum.
Adrien Briffod, Max Studer and Simon Westermann will race for Switzerland. Several countries will then send two man teams. Among them are Italy (Gianluca Pozzatti and Michele Sarzilla), Belgium (Arnaud Mengal and Marten Van Riel), Brazil (Manoel Messias and Miguel Hidalgo), Canada (Tyler Mislawchuk and Charles Paquet) South Africa (Jamie Riddle and Henri Schoeman) and America (Matthew McElroy and Seth Rider).
Matthew Hauser, a WTCS race winner in 2023, will be the lone Australian man. Similarly, Richard Murray, Jawad Abdelmoula and Aram Michell Peñaflor Moysen will be the only male representatives of their countries.
While the men’s start list is stacked, the women’s does not lack for talent.
The defending world champion, Beth Potter, is back and leads a British team that also contains Georgia Taylor-Brown, Sophie Coldwell and Kate Waugh.
France will match Britain in sending a team made up entirely of WTCS medallists. Cassandre Beaugrand, Emma Lombardi and Leonie Periault will be starting after Beaugrand and Lombardi made the overall WTCS podium last year.
A large American team will be racing with Taylor Knibb, Kirsten Kasper, Gwen Jorgensen, Taylor Spivey and Summer Rappaport all due to start. Five German women will also race in Abu Dhabi with Annika Koch, Nina Eim, Laura Lindemann, Lisa Tertsch and Marlene Gomez-Göggel scheduled to race.
Bianca Seregni, Ilaria Zane, Verena Steinhauser and Alice Betto will be racing for Italy while Miriam Casillas Garcia, Anna Godoy Contreras and Noelia Juan will start for Spain. Australia will send three women in the form of Natalie Van Coevorden, Sophie Linn and Charlotte McShane.
Switzerland (Julie Derron and Cathia Schär), New Zealand (Nicole Van Der Kaay and Ainsley Thorpe), Netherlands (Maya Kingma and Rachel Klamer), Mexico (Rosa Maria Tapia Vidal and Lizeth Rueda Santos), Belgium (Claire Michel and Jolien Vermeylen), Brazil (Vittoria Lopes and Djenyfer Arnold) and Japan (Yuka Sato and Yuko Takahashi) will be sending two athletes apiece.
On the women’s start list, there are a lot of athletes standing as the only female representatives of their country. This group includes Emy Legualt, Alberte Kjaer Pedersen, Petra Kurikova ans Lisa Perterer. Moreover, Jeanne Lehair, Sinem Francisca Tous Servera, Ivana Kuriackova, Maria Carolina Velasquez Soto and Zsanett Kuttor-Bragmayer are among the solo starters for their teams.
Who’s not there?
Vincent Luis was originally the only man in the top-40 of the Olympic Qualification rankings not slated to start in Abu Dhabi. However, he has since been substituted in for Pierre Le Corre. After missing much of 2023 with injury, Abu Dhabi will mark a year since Luis last raced internationally. Le Corre, meanwhile, will delay the start to his season after a barnstorming 2023 in which he claimed his first WTCS win.
Jelle Geens was originally on the start list too. The Belgian athlete, though, will be the second man in the top-40 of the Olympic rankings not to start (alongside Le Corre) after he was switched out for Arnaud Mengal.
Diego Moya (41st in the Olympic rankings) is another highly ranked athlete to opt out of the race. In addition, Olympic qualifier Morgan Pearson will not be starting.
Double individual Olympic medallist Jonathan Brownlee will also not start. With his compatriot Barclay Izzard starting (and with Izzard being ahead of Brownlee in the Olympic rankings), there is a chance that Brownlee will not make it to a fourth straight Games.
On the note of Olympic hopes, the absence of Gustav Iden may indicate that his hope of making it to Paris are now over with Blummenfelt and Thorn firmly entrenched.
On the women’s side, Flora Duffy continues her long-standing absence from the sport. She last raced internationally at the WTCS Final in Abu Dhabi in 2022. The European Games champion, Solveig Løvseth, is another notable non-starter while Lena Meißner is likewise missing. Despite her high world ranking, Meißner is the latest to have suffered with the exceptional levels of depth in the German squad.
Main talking points
Another Knibb-Zaferes switch?
This time last year, Katie Zaferes made her return to elite triathlon from a maternity absence at WTCS Abu Dhabi. To do so, she was substituted into the event, taking the place of her teammate, Knibb.
As things stand, Knibb has already qualified for the American Olympic team and may opt against starting in Abu Dhabi. Instead, she may choose to start her season a little later with a view to peaking in the summer. Meanwhile, Zaferes is currently not on the start list. This is because she does not rank among the five leading American women in the world rankings.
A repeat of 2023 could therefore be in store. In order for Zaferes to race, she may take advantage of Knibb’s potential absence. Should Knibb actually race, though, Zaferes will have to wait until later in the year to get a look in.
Olympic head-to-heads
Although WTCS Abu Dhabi is not an explicitly stated qualification race for most countries it will nonetheless offer the opening bouts of several Olympic clashes.
Among the British squad, for example, Georgia Taylor-Brown, Sophie Coldwell and Kate Waugh will battle it out for the first time in 2024. After each won a WTCS medal in 2023, they will be fighting over two remaining spots on the British Olympic team (Beth Potter took the first).
Furthermore Matthew McElroy and Seth Rider will be gunning for the final American men’s slot after Morgan Pearson claimed the first place on the team. Should neither hit the automatic American criteria for selection, every positive result possible will be needed to earn discretionary selection.
Likewise, Jonas Schomburg will be up against Lasse Nygaard Priester in the race for the final German Olympic slot. While Schomburg has the upper hand through his lead in the Olympic rankings, beating Priester would do his aspirations no harm at all.
Repeating the trick
A handful of athletes will be starting in Abu Dhabi after winning their first ever WTCS medals in 2023.
Among this group are Kate Waugh, Rosa Maria Tapia Vidal and Annika Koch. The challenge facing them this year will be to repeat the feat and claim another medal in the Series. In doing so, they will be able to prove that their success was no flash in the pan.
Notably, Koch is the only one of the trio to have claimed her medal over the Sprint distance, which will be contested in Abu Dhabi. As such, she may be best placed to already win a second medal.
Backing up a WTCS medal is by no means easy. Of the first-time medallists from 2022, for example, Manoel Messias and Hayden Wilde went on to claim another medal in 2023. However, the likes of Lisa Tertsch, Jawad Abdelmoula, Lasse Lührs, Antonio Serrat Seoane and Roberto Sanchez Mantecon all missed out last season.
The new medallists from 2023 can therefore take heart that they know how to medal while also being cognizant of the difficulty of doing so.
Simon Henseleit
As the reigning World U23 champion, Henseleit’s presence on the start lists is naturally of interest. The German athlete had a terrific 2023 and will look to make an early statement in his 2024 campaign.
However, he came very close to starting the season at all.
In 2014, he was diagnosed with aortic valve insufficiency, essentially a heart defect. He was allowed to continue his sporting career although in May of last year he was advised to stop after an annual check-up revealed an increase in the insufficiency. With no immediate risk, Henseleit opted to see out the season and then sought further input from a cardiac specialist. After receiving the green light, he will be racing again in 2024.
Henseleit’s example is a good case study for all young athletes with respect to the important of regular cardiac checks. All the training and fitness in the world is no guarantee of cardiac health and all athletes should ideally endeavour to get checked before every season.
You can view the full start lists here.
