Like all things in life, racing at the elite level of triathlon changes and evolves as new athletes emerge and others decline towards the end of their careers. Like artists competing over the same canvas, each athlete can paint in a style unique to them in the moment afforded by their athletic talents, leaving a vivid array of colours, styles and crafts over the years as athlete after athlete leaves their mark.
Like any revolution, there will be clues ahead of time for how these changes will look. We will not be able to predict when the change comes, but when it does arrive we will look back and wonder how we missed it.
The nature of Olympic distance racing will remain pretty much the same in 2023 – it is a swim-bike-run affair after all. What may change is the character of the race. By that we mean the style in which the athletes try to win the races may change.
In the women’s 2023 WTCS, might we see the beginning of the end of an era?
Gwen Jorgensen defined the “Gwen” era. In the “Gwen” era, Jorgensen was so overwhelmingly dominant on the run that the rest of the race did not seem to matter all that much. Athletes could try to break away on the swim and bike, as some like Flora Duffy repeatedly tried, but Jorgensen always seemed to have the ability to close any gap on the run.
It was precisely this dominance, though, that gave rise to the revolution. For someone else to win, change had to come. And change would come. And it did so through Flora Duffy. At first, Duffy tried to breakaway and, although Gwen would still catch her, it made for gripping drama. As time went on, and as Flora’s attacks became more intense, the strategy began to solidify.
With an aggressive swim and bike, a big enough lead could be built that no runner could surmount. Over time, Duffy added world class running to her repertoire too. However the “Duffy style” was very much the inverse of the “Gwen” era. The damage was done early in the race rather than at the end.
Gradually, the Duffy revolution became the norm in the field. Athletes such as Jess Learmonth, Maya Kingma and Sophie Coldwell have won WTCS medals off the back of it in recent years. Nowadays, if you aren’t in the leading pack of the women’s race you have no hope of winning.
Indeed, we may have seen peak “Duffy style” in 2021 when the strategy was used against her at WTCS Leeds. On that day, the roles were reversed and Duffy had to use her elite run (which has grown year-on-year) to chase down the aggressive front pack.
This is not to say that every race has followed a fixed pattern, but rather that the trend has always been present in the background. In the broad strokes of the last ten years, first there was Gwen, then there was Flora.
The question now is simple. What comes next?
Change is inevitable in life and triathlon is not immune to it. In the women’s field, this may be a gradual change and it is fair to say that 2023 will likely look like the classic “Duffy style”, particularly with Taylor Knibb on hand to assist any breakaway.
2023, though, may be the year that the clues emerge of how the upcoming change will look.
There is a significant concentration of fast runners in the chase pack, perhaps more than there have been for the past few years. The likes of Cassandre Beaugrand, Beth Potter, Leonie Periault, Miriam Casillas Garcia, Alberte Kjaer-Pedersen and Emma Lombardi have all shown signs of threatening the front pack with their run speed. Some of them may even make the front pack from time to time.
(In case you missed it, Gwen Jorgensen has announced she will be returning to triathlon. She will likely be in the pack of fast runners but currently is a bit of an unknown so we have opted to leave her out for now).
Three crucial names stand out in that group: Beaugrand, Periault and Lombardi. One of the drivers of any potential change in the character of the race and how races may be won will be the need of that trio to find a way to win heading into their home Olympics.
If the French trio do not make the front pack, a new strategy will be required.
Therefore, the primary change we may be able to expect in 2023 is a little more cohesion from the chase pack in the knowledge that there could be a window to overpower the breakaway with running speed.
What we may see next season, then, is the start of a shift in the balance of power in favour of the runners in the chase pack.
This counter will likely come primarily over the Sprint distance but it could happen over the Olympic distance too. Athletes like Beaugrand do not necessarily need to close the gap on the bike entirely; they simply need to keep within range of the leaders.
How the races will look in the short term, will likely hinge on Duffy herself. If she can stay in her 2022 shape going into Paris then she could push the race as it currently is.
However, she could suffer injury or loss of form, or begin to slow down as a natural next step in a long career.
If you take out Duffy from the front group, Georgia Taylor-Brown is the only athlete left that can really match the likes of Beaugrand and Periault on the run.
As a result, in 2023 we expect that the women’s WTCS will have plenty of breakaways, just as it has in recent seasons. The slight difference will be that the chase pack may become a little more assertive and limit its losses more than it has done so recently. In doing so, it will create a window for race winners to come from the chase pack.
Then again, maybe the coming change in the women’s race won’t go as suggested here. We don’t have a crystal ball after all. But with new athletes entering the field and old favourites leaving over the next couple of years, change will come.
The biggest clues to how the new order will look might just turn up in 2023.
