The fourth round of the WTCS season will see the Series move to North America. For several years now, Montreal has been a fixture in the Series and the Canadian city will host a race again this June.
After hosting a Super Sprint format in 2021 and 2022, this year it will revert to a classic Sprint race.
Who’s there?
After a topsy-turvy start to the year, Hayden Wilde will be starting at his fourth straight WTCS event. He will be joined by Tayler Reid to form a two man New Zealand team.
Wilde’s rival for the world title, Alex Yee, will also be racing. In Montreal last year, Yee pipped Wilde to the win. This time around, every point will matter with Wilde holding the upper hand as his win in Yokohama was worth 250 more points than Yee’s win in Abu Dhabi. Expect a closely-fought battle on the run between the pair.
Also racing for Britain will be Jonathan Brownlee, Jack Willis and Barclay Izzard.
Vincent Luis is the lone Frenchman due to start. However there is a question mark hanging over his attendance. In the wake of the news that his recent hip injury was worse than feared, he might not actually make it to the start line in Canada. There is a chance, then, that he could be substituted out for another French athlete.
Matthew Hauser will be hoping to carry his recent success in Yokohama forward by racing in Montreal. Brandon Copeland and Luke Willian are the other two Australian men slated to start.
From the Americas, Morgan Pearson and Matthew Mcelroy head up a strong American men’s contingent while Manoel Messias and Miguel Hidalgo will be racing for Brazil. That quartet should be in the mix for medals (or at least spots inside the top-8). Messias already has a WTCS medal to his name this season while Hidalgo recently ripped a 14:06 5000m.
The classic Belgian duo of Jelle Geens and Marten Van Riel will race. Likewise, Spain will send some familiar faces with Antonio Serrat Seoane, Roberto Sanchez Mantecon, Genis Grau and David Castro Fajardo all appearing on the start list. Sergio Baxter Cabrera was originally listed as a starter however was switched out for Grau.
Four German men will race. The team will consist of Lasse Lührs, Johannes Vogel, Jonas Schomburg and Valentin Wernz.
Two of the oldest athletes in the field will come from Mexico; Irving Perez and Rodrigo Gonzalez will both be starting after solid performances at the recent Americas Cup in Ixtapa.
Vasco Vilaca will also start to ensure that all of the male medallists from the current WTCS season will be in Montreal. He will be joined by Joao Pereira and Ricardo Batista.
Among those racing as the only representative of their country will be Adrien Briffod, Diego Moya, Jawad Abdelmoula and Kristian Blummenfelt.
On the women’s side, a full strength British team will be racing. Two race winners from this season will start in the guise of Sophie Coldwell and Beth Potter. Kate Waugh will also race after recording her best ever WTCS finish in Yokohama. Ironically, last year’s runner-up in the women’s Series, Georgia Taylor-Brown, is the only member of the British quartet without a WTCS top-5 to her name this year.
Given that Taylor-Brown won in Montreal in 2022, it would be remiss to overlook her.
A familiar roster of American women will also head north to Montreal. Taylor Knibb and Taylor Spivey, two WTCS medallists from this year, will be there, as will Summer Rappaport, Kirsten Kasper and Erika Ackerlund.
In contrast to the Americans, the French are not sending a big team. Leonie Periault is the sole French woman due to race.
Aside from the Americans, Germany will have the biggest women’s team in Montreal. Anabel Knoll, Laura Lindemann, Nina Eim, Lisa Tertsch and Lena Meißner will all be racing. All five have finished inside the top-10 at a WTCS Sprint race and any of them could spring a big result.
Nicole Van Der Kaay and Ainsley Thorpe will be racing for New Zealand. Meanwhile Mexico will have a strong team with Cecilia Perez, Rosa Maria Tapia Vidal, Cecilia Ramirez Alavez and Lizeth Rueda Santos scheduled to start. Perez was added to the start list in place of Anahi Alvarez Corral.
Several countries will be represented by only one woman. Jeanne Lehair will be Luxembourg’s sole representative while Miriam Casillas Garcia will be the only Spanish woman racing. Maria Carolina Velasquez Soto will be starting for Colombia and Xinyu Lin will be starting for China.
Who’s not there?
Two French athletes, Dorian Coninx and Leo Bergere, will skip Montreal. Both have medalled there in previous seasons and already have two finishes inside the top-6 in Abu Dhabi and Yokohama to their names. Their absence could provide opportunities for others to step up but also for the likes of Vilaca, Wilde and Yee to extend their advantages in the Series.
Richard Murray will not race. He will be tackling Bundesliga Schliersee instead. In addition Vetle Bergsvik Thorn and Gustav Iden are absent. Neither Thorn nor Iden appear on the wait list so may simply not be focused on taking on the Sprint distance this time round.
Michele Sarzilla and Csongor Lehmann are two others to pass up on the race.
Flora Duffy continues her absence following her ongoing issues with her knee. She might yet race at the Paris Test Event and will not be seen until August in all likelihood.
Last year’s silver medallist in Montreal, Cassandre Beaugrand, will skip the event as will her team mate Emma Lombardi. There will also be no Dutch representatives at all as the likes of Maya Kingma and Rachel Klamer opt out of the race.
Alberte Kjaer Pedersen is another athlete to pass on racing.
Main talking points
Breaking up the Anglo-American duopoly
After two rounds, four Brits and three Americans sit in top-10 of women’s Series. Both countries will be sending big teams to Montreal and could pile up plenty of points.
With Kirsten Kasper lurking in 11th, there is every possibility that eight of the slots in the top-10 are soon locked out by two countries.
The challenge will be for another country to elbow their way into their duopoly. Rosa Maria Tapia Vidal, Emma Lombardi and Nina Eim are currently the three non-British/American athletes in the Series top-10. With Lombardi sitting Montreal out, it will fall to Tapia and Eim to hold their positions.
Germany will have a big team in Montreal packed with athletes that enjoy the Sprint distance. Of any country they could be best placed to break up the current status quo. However there is no immediate end in sight to the domination of the British and Americans.
Blummenfelt’s WTCS Sprint comeback
Kristian Blummenfelt will be making his first start at a Sprint WTCS event since the single day world championships in Hamburg in 2020. On that day he finished 13th.
Prior to 2020, Blummenfelt only had two top-5 finishes at Sprint races to his name in the Series. He won a silver medal in Edmonton in 2018 and finished 5th in Montreal in 2019.
It will therefore be fascinating to see how he fares over the shorter format. Having moved up to long distance in the last few years, his speed might not be at its sharpest and so another top-5 might be beyond him.
That being said, he took a silver medal at the Bergen World Cup over the Sprint distance last August, so the challenge is not beyond him.
Home hopes
Charles Paquet and Tyler Mislawchuk will be heading up the Canadian men’s team while Amelie Kretz, Emy Legault and Dominika Jamnicky will be racing for the women.
Paquet and Jamnicky have won Americas Cup races this year, with the former winning in St. Peters and the latter winning in La Paz. Moreover Mislawchuk looked great at WTCS Abu Dhabi until a penalty undermined his day.
All three will be hoping to translate their recent showings into home success in Montreal.
Kretz and Legault will also be pushing to make a mark on the race. Kretz won a medal in St. Peters and has been gathering momentum, as shown by her recent 21st at WTCS Yokohama. Legault is also an athlete on the rise and has already logged some good running times this year.
Canada therefore has several reasons to be optimistic and hopefully one of their athletes can deliver in front of home fans.
All the French eggs in the Paris basket
For the second time this season, France will only be sending one woman to a WTCS event. In Yokohama, Lombardi was the only athlete to race and in Montreal it will fall to Leonie Periault to fly the flag.
With the rankings of the French women, it is clear that the federation are choosing not to send them (and that the athletes are choosing not to go).
More significantly, the federation is also choosing not to send the high-ranked athletes and substitute them out for their next tier of World Cup medallists like Mathilde Gautier, Sandra Dodet and Audrey Merle. Not maximising their substitutions does strike as somewhat of a missed opportunity.
Indeed the Montreal start lists suggest the entire French focus is on Paris, with the Test Event taking first precedence and then the Big One in 2024 coming next.
Only Vincent Luis is going for the men, although more French men have raced in the first three events of the season.
View the men’s start list here and the women’s start list here.
