When WTCS Abu Dhabi was cancelled at the start of March, there was a hole in the international triathlon calendar. After months of delicate planning, the best-laid designs of athletes, coaches and federations alike suddenly had to be shelved and redrawn. Most significantly, the cancellation sounded the starting gun on the scramble that followed.
For a variety of reasons – such as in service of Olympic qualification or simply getting their season started – those that had been due to race in Abu Dhabi rushed to find alternative races. World Triathlon responded by extending the start lists of subsequent events to ensure those that wanted to make up for lost time could. Without another WTCS race for two months, though, the only options were to enter the World Cup and European Cup spheres.
In a swoop, the outlook for the lower levels of the sport changed and the March madness began.
It is possible to detect the scramble by athletes through the rise in the strength of the March start lists. Borrowing from the index system of the French federation, start list strength can be ascertained by assigning each race a score based on the world rankings of those starting. More specifically, the mean of the rankings of those in the top-8 on the start list are taken to generate the index. (An explanation of the index system can be found here.) Simply put, the lower the score, the stronger the field.
A score of 4.5 is as strong as a field can be and indicates that all of the top-8 athletes in the world are in attendance.
If we look to the start of the season, back in February and prior to the cancellation of WTCS Abu Dhabi, we see that the Napier World Cup had a solid, if unspectacular, index. The women’s race had a strength score of 39.3 while the men’s score stood at 37.4. The highest ranked starter in either race came in the form of Hayden Wilde in the men’s event.
When we progress through March, a clear spike in strength can be traced.
At the Hong Kong World Cup, the women’s score improved to 27.0. The men’s likewise saw a jump, settling at 27.5. At the next World Cup, in Lievin, the women’s event became stronger still (20.0). Conversely, the men’s field weakened to 57.9.
The Quarteira European Cup also fell on the same weekend as Hong Kong. While the men’s score was only 105.4, the women’s was an astonishing 12.8. Indeed, the women’s score was in the territory of WTCS strength. By way of comparison, WTCS Sunderland last summer had an index of 13.1.
It should also be noted that the men’s indices in Quarteira and Lievin were artificially raised by one man: Vincent Luis. Luis had a start number of 7 in Lievin and 6 in Quarteira; having not finished an international race for a year, though, his world ranking was anomalously outside the top-100 in Quarteira. Luis alone, then, was a major contributor to the high scores at the two events. Given his calibre (normally he would be at least a top-10 athlete), it also makes those two instances a little more misleading than would usually be the case.
The jump from February to March already speaks to a rise in strength in the start lists and how WTCS-level athletes sought alternative events. We can also see a marked shift against the same period in 2023.
In March 2023, the New Plymouth World Cup had a women’s index of over 40 while the men’s stood at 30.6. In general, that is slightly weaker than that seen in the March 2024 events.
Quarteira offers the most direction point of comparison. In 2023, the women’s race had a score of 32.1. Led by the race-winning Cassandre Beaugrand, the women’s Quarteira European Cup was actually deeper than ten women’s World Cup events last year.
The strength of the field, however, was far greater in 2024. In addition to Beaugrand, WTCS medallists like Lisa Tertsch and Georgia Taylor-Brown raced at the Portuguese event.
The men’s race in Quarteira in 2023 had an index of 73.3. Accounting for the Luis anomaly in 2024, this year’s event technically was stronger, even if the final index indicates otherwise.
Looking more broadly across the 2023 season, there was only one women’s World Cup race with an index of under 30; Rome scored 22.0. For Hong Kong, Lievin and Quarteira to have surpassed the 30.0 threshold already speaks to the impetus given by the cancellation of WTCS Abu Dhabi. Furthermore, the men’s field in Hong Kong was stronger than all bar two of the 2023 World Cups (Rome scored 15.8 and Tangier scored 27.4, a whopping 0.1 better than Hong Kong).
Of course, there are other factors at play. Hong Kong was a new and exotic location, which helped it draw a bumper field. In addition, the Olympic year element would probably have improved the strength of start lists even without the cancellation.
Separately, it should also be noted that the index system only covers the top-end strength of the race. The use of it here is not to say that it is a perfect means of comparing races.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that there was a distinct increase in the quality of fields in March which most likely came about as a result of the cancellation of WTCS Abu Dhabi. The words of the athletes themselves also bear out the trend as several have said that they had to pivot and find new races, from Gwen Jorgensen to Taylor-Brown and more.
In more ways than one, then, the loss of Abu Dhabi shook up the triathlon landscape. After the March madness, we will see what the rest of the 2024 season has to bring.
