Even after winning the opening race of the WTCS season in Abu Dhabi, Beth Potter maintained that she had not yet thought about a potential world title.
The sentiment was sensible enough. The end of the season lay a long way down the line and there were plenty of pitfalls that prevented such a counting of the proverbial chickens.
And yet, such was the authority with which she won in Abu Dhabi, a statement had been made.
On the first weekend of March, Potter planted her flag into the ground with such assuredness, in hindsight it is easy to say there was no real point at which her path to the title was under any real threat.
That is not to say she lacked challengers. Although injury deprived Flora Duffy the chance to defend her crown, Potter otherwise faced a full complement of rivals.
One might be tempted to make the argument that Potter won because others slipped up. That in itself is as ill-thought as it is disingenuous. By definition, if Potter won because others slipped up, she did not slip up. Ergo, she was the better athlete across the season.
Coming into 2023, Potter was hovering a little below the radar of world title contenders, that much is probably fair to say upon reflection. She concluded 2022 with three WTCS medals to her name, including her maiden trip to the podium, and had established herself as a player at the top level. A win, though, had eluded her. So too had a kind of hard edge to her racing style.
For want of a better expression, Potter had not yet been the playground bully at races. She had seemed to be more the one fighting back.
This season, however, she became the dominant presence in the women’s field.
Her win in Abu Dhabi showcased all of her best qualities. Her swim, a somewhat under-appreciated asset, put her in the breakaway. From there, she rode hard in the lead group to defend her advantage and then utilised her superior running to cut her rivals loose.
Her next race at WTCS Cagliari saw a bumpier return. In contrast to Abu Dhabi, she missed the breakaway after losing time in the swim. From the distance of 6th place, Potter could only look on as her compatriot Georgia Taylor-Brown swept to victory. Furthermore, Taylor-Brown’s victory meant that three British women had won the opening three rounds following Sophie Coldwell’s win in Yokohama.
As good as Potter had looked in the season opener, she risked being nudged off-stage already.
At the next race, though, she snatched back the limelight.
Another off-colour swim at WTCS Montreal left her with work to do. Unlike Cagliari, Potter rallied and rode her way back into the main pack. Even with Taylor Knibb and Summer Rappaport riding off the front, she remained in a comfortable position. The run soon came and Potter duly ground her rivals down, kicking away from Leonie Periault in the closing metres to take a hard-earned victory.
If Abu Dhabi had been a kind of perfect race in which all aspects of Potter’s skillset had fired, Montreal was much more of a brawl. On the one hand, it took a kind of mental toughness to remain composed after the swim and on the bike to turn the tables back in her favour. On the other hand, she exhibited a different kind of presence to that of 2023.
In 2022, Montreal may have been the kind of race Potter would have run through to take a bronze medal, maybe the silver medal on a very good day. The plaudits and the gold, though, would have lay elsewhere. In 2023, she almost barged through the field and squashed the hopes of those around her.
A silver medal followed at WTCS Hamburg as Cassandre Beaugrand became the first non-British race winner of the year.
When Beaugrand won again at WTCS Sunderland, drawing her level with Potter’s two golds, a new challenger had clearly emerged with the end of season in sight. After a slightly slower start to the year, the French athlete was in fine fettle and was building towards a tilt at a maiden world title.
Once again, Potter stamped her authority down on the nascent resistance.
At the Paris Olympic Test Event, the final race of the regular WTCS season, Potter bided her time on the run, sapping Beaugrand’s legs as she did, until she launched a devastating final surge. For the first time in 2023, Potter also out-split Beaugrand on the final discipline, adding a minor victory to go with the larger win.
In Paris, Beaugrand had been one of the best swimmers. She had been highly effective on the bike. And she had logged her best ever Olympic distance WTCS performance. Across the board, she was exceptional. It still was not enough to get past Potter.
As much as Beaugrand had technically taken the Series lead after Paris, Potter retained significant momentum.
Whether it had been the fireworks of Coldwell in Abu Dhabi, the blinding speed of Periault in Montreal or the brilliance of Beaugrand in Paris, Potter had overcome the best that an array of rivals could throw at her. Each time the Series reloaded with the next threat, Potter assessed the opponent and then squeezed them, suffocating them until they snapped.
Her magnum opus of 2023 came at the WTCS Final in Pontevedra. The shoot-out with Beaugrand did not materialise as Potter dropped her on the first lap of the run. What followed was the best part of a 30 minute victory lap.
There is plenty to unpack about the quality of Potter’s performance in Pontevedra. Her swim fired to one of its best levels of the year and she was strong on the bike as always. They were not the story, though. Even her field-leading run split was not necessarily what stood out.
The most notable aspect came on the third lap of the run.
Kate Waugh, the 2022 World U23 champion that was flying in the best WTCS display of her young career, strode alongside Potter. Waugh was fully extended and could smell a first WTCS medal. All she had to do was hang on.
Meanwhile, Potter waited for the correct moment and then pounced.
In that single move, she showed the difference between the 2022 version of herself and the new 2023 model. A season earlier, Potter may have been more like Waugh: happy with a podium and the promise of something bigger in the future. Now, she was a different proposition. Now, Potter was the older kid pushing the younger one aside, the undisputed queen of the playground.
When Flora Duffy returns to racing and Georgia Taylor-Brown is back from injury, further questions will be asked of Potter. The ongoing rise of Cassandre Beaugrand and Emma Lombardi will pose similar challenges.
The lesson of 2023, though, has been absolutely unequivocal. More than any other woman in the Series right now, Potter is an athlete hewn from granite and will be incredibly difficult to stop.
Maybe it should have been clear from the way she planted her flag all that time ago in Abu Dhabi. She was not messing around then and she was not either in Pontevedra.
The speed and skills across all disciplines are one thing. Yet the toughness, authority and sheer bloody-mindedness Potter has shown in 2023 perhaps go to the furthest extent in explaining how she became the champion of the world.
