Homecomings don’t come much sweeter than this.
Three years after being forced to miss her home race in Bermuda through injury, Flora Duffy returned to win WTCS Bermuda in emphatic fashion. Coming into the race, the smallest of doubts had begun to form over whether her extraordinary standards were beginning to falter.
Wins at the Commonwealth Games and WTCS Hamburg in July were impressive. However, the rest of Duffy’s season year had yet to fully ignite in the way it had in the past. Those concerns were comprehensively put to rest yesterday.
Duffy was superlative throughout. At every point in the race, she was either in the lead or essentially within touching distance of the leader. It was in the swim, though, that the most significant move of the race happened, a move not made by Duffy but one from which she benefitted as much as anyone.
Bianca Seregni of Italy was starting only her second ever WTCS race in Bermuda. While she has had an impressive development over the past year or so, the step up to WTCS racing can be a challenge for any athlete. Someone forgot to tell Seregni.
Along with Duffy, she detonated the field in the water, putting around half a minute into seasoned racers like Taylor Knibb, Taylor Spivey and Natalie Van Coevorden. By the time she and Duffy left the water to head to T1, only 3 other women were within 15 seconds of the pair.
Though a small group would form at the front out the race, including Seregni, Vittoria Lopes, Beth Potter and Sophie Coldwell, among others, it was attacked almost instantly by Duffy. As Duffy broke clear, Maya Kingma rode through the chasers to form a duo at the front that would not be caught for the rest of the bike.
Further down the field, Taylor Knibb broke clear of the main pack and rode solo. Though she would catch and pass the chase pack behind Duffy and Kingma, she could not quite bridge the gap to the leading duo.
For whatever reason, the chase group could not quite organise themselves. They did not react to Knibb’s break nor did they effectively dent Kingma and Duffy’s lead. Similarly, the main pack lost well over a minute over the bike to the lead pair. On the one hand, this is testament to how well Duffy and Kingma rode. On the other, it suggests that there was a lack of impetus in the chases outside of Knibb. Perhaps Duffy has that effect on the field: once she is gone, she is effectively considered uncatchable.
Within seconds of leaving T2, it was clear that Duffy had won the race. After all her hard work, Kingma’s race was cruelly compromised by an ankle injury. At several points she looked in discomfort on the run but her determination saw her make it to the finish line.
Knibb quickly caught and passed Kingma in the first half of the run. That left Kingma to cling to third ahead of a charging Beth Potter. On another day it would have a made for a great battle, but Kingma’s injury meant that Potter was always going to catch her and the gap dwindled.
Knibb and Potter went on take silver and bronze, capping off strong seasons for the two of them. In her last three outings, Knibb has taken 3rd at WTCS Cagliari, 1st at World 70.3 Championships in St. George and now 2nd at WTCS Yokohama. She will head to the WTCS Final in Abu Dhabi in exceptional form.
Potter, meanwhile, took her third WTCS medal of the season and her first ever WTCS medal over the Olympic distance. 2022 has really been the year she has hit her stride at this level and she could be an even greater threat to the podium next year.
Laura Lindemann and Taylor Spviey also overtook Kingma to finish in 4th and 5th, with Kingma taking 6th. Three athletes then came through from the main pack. Miriam Casillas Garcia, Verena Steinhauser and Luisa Baptista had been a long way down on the leaders and chasers coming into the run. Each woman logged impressive splits, though, as they surged to 7th, 8th and 9th place, respectively.
Casillas Garcia’s run was particularly notable as she recorded the third fastest run of the day. Like Potter, she has stepped up this season and is not far off making her first podium.
Seregni managed to hold her race together after her dominant swim for 10th place.
Ultimately, it was Duffy’s day and her win sets up an enticing finale in Abu Dhabi in three weeks. Whoever triumphs of Duffy and Georgia Taylor-Brown on the day will take the world title. With Potter’s bronze, she currently sits in third in the Series and will have to fight off multiple contenders to hold on to that slot.
View the results here.
