Yesterday, we introduced the concept of strategy in the WTCS and surveyed the female gold medallists from the current Olympic cycle that could lay claim to being a multi-strategy athlete.
The conclusion was that Beth Potter, Flora Duffy and Georgia Taylor-Brown are the three multi-strategy athletes that are currently operating in the women’s Series. As it happens, the trio have also won all four of the world titles since 2020.
In this article, we will be turning to the men’s Series and considering which of the WTCS gold medallists in the current Olympic cycle can be regarded as multi-strategy athletes.
On the men’s side, the reigning world champion is a tricky athlete to place. Dorian Coninx has all the hallmarks of being a multi-strategy athlete. He is fantastic in all three disciplines and has the ability to win in a number of ways.
For an athlete as good in the swim as him, though, there is one point that holds him back. He has not yet won a WTCS medal in a breakaway. His maiden WTCS medal, a bronze in Cape Town in 2016, could be considered as such although it is debatable due to the sizes of the bike packs involved. Given it was also over seven years ago, it is not the most relevant data point.
Coninx’s latest win at WTCS Pontevedra was not really a breakaway either. The front pack exceeded twenty men. To be considered a breakaway group perhaps the front pack has to be under ten men, although this is a contestable point.
Moreover, Coninx’s win in Montreal in 2021 was over the Super Sprint eliminator and was a running race. Looking even further back, his other WTCS win, in Bermuda in 2019, was also a running race.
His primary strategy, then, is winning with his stupendous finishing kick which falls squarely in the running race approach.
To maintain consistency with the analysis of the women’s gold medallists, Coninx has not proven he can win in a breakaway so remains very much potential. He could conceivably win in a breakaway although the absence of evidence behind the claim makes it a little too hypothetical for comfort.
Then there is the 2022 world champion, Leo Bergere. Bergere has one WTCS win to his name, in Abu Dhabi in 2022, which was the ultimate breakaway. While he is a classy runner, he does not rely on a running strategy to win in the Series.
At WTCS Yokohama this year, he went mano-a-mano with Hayden Wilde in a running race and missed the podium.
Bergere did out-run Coninx at WTCS Cagliari. As such, there is a degree of looseness in the categories. Then again, Coninx out-ran Bergere in Abu Dhabi, Yokohama, Paris and Pontevedra in 2023.
All things considered, then, Bergere has primarily relied upon the breakaway strategy.
Meanwhile, the nearly men of the past two WTCS seasons have been Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde. They have an identical strategy and can also be considered single strategy athletes.
Yee won three WTCS races in 2022 and 2023 yet in both years missed the world title. Wilde has equally proven a major threat, having won WTCS Yokohama and WTCS Hamburg this year after winning in Leeds and Hamburg in 2022.
All of their wins at the WTCS level have come in running races.
The only point of hesitation is Wilde’s success at WTCS Hamburg this year. His late attack on the bike helped him defeat Yee for the first time. On paper, then, that could be a breakaway of sorts. The problem is that it the attack came in final straight of the bike and bought a couple of seconds.
In a moment of opportunism, Wilde caught his rivals napping. Indeed his superiority in T2 did as much to win the race as his attack on the bike. On balance, then, his victory was more the result of a tactically-inspired move than an over-arching strategy. Remember, tactics and strategy are not the same thing.
Wilde has spoken of improving his swim in the last twelve months. However, he has not medalled from a breakaway that formed out of T1 or early during the bike in the WTCS. Wilde’s alternative strategy, then, remains grounded in potential rather than reality.
On a separate note, the reason that Coninx has won one WTCS race in two years could be because his primary winning strategy is shared by the likes of Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde, giving him limited options to beat them.
Then there is the 2021 world and Olympic champion, Kristian Blummenfelt. Again, his case is another of a purely run-centric strategy. All of Blummenfelt’s WTCS wins have come on the run after arriving in T2 with a large main pack.
This is not to say that Yee, Wilde and Blummenfelt are only runners. They are awesome cyclists and clearly good enough swimmers to be in contention coming into T2. The point is that they have a clearly defined history of success. They are guided by a certain strategy and when that strategy does not work, such as at the 2022 and 2023 WTCS Finals, they do not yet have a back-up approach.
In a similar respect, Jelle Geens, the winner of WTCS Abu Dhabi in 2021, can be considered a run-centric athlete. Like Yee, Wilde and Blummenfelt, Geens has not typically been at the front of the swim which narrows his range of strategic choices. His brilliant running then doubles down on offering him a singular winning strategy.
There is no shame in having one strategy and it is important to note that this is never meant in a bad way. Mario Mola won three straight world titles by being the best runner in the field. Sometimes, the simplest way to win is to play with the cards dealt.
Matthew Hauser won WTCS Montreal this year and his success to date makes him look a lot like a run-centric athlete. Like Coninx, he is armed with plenty of swimming speed and could mature into a multi-strategy athlete, but he has not quite realised his potential on that front yet.
Equally, like Beaugrand in the women’s Series, Hauser might be part of a new strategy which will be discussed elsewhere.
Hellwig is the youngest of all the winners in this Olympic cycle. Like Lindemann, he won in the slightly odd experience that was WTCS Hamburg in 2021.
He nonetheless has enjoyed a very impressive 2023, culminating with a silver medal in Pontevedra. Given his age and stage of development, for the time being we will reach for the cop out answer of saying Hellwig is too young to say for sure what he is yet. He is rising prospect but is not yet regularly competing for wins in the way the other athletes listed have been.
That leaves one man. In fact, it leaves the individual that could be considered the last true multi-strategy athlete in the men’s WTCS.
Vincent Luis earned his sole WTCS win in the pre-Paris Olympic cycle in Bermuda in 2022. That day, he won the race with a daring breakaway that saw him take down the likes of Yee, Blummenfelt and Geens without ever letting them into the race.
As world champion in 2019 and 2020, he has proven himself as being able to win in a running race too. In winning a silver medal at WTCS Abu Dhabi in 2021 and placing 4th at the same event in 2023, he has shown he still has the speed to contend in a run-centric race.
The only question mark surrounding him is that he has not won in that way since 2020.
At his peak, Luis was a multi-strategy athlete just as the likes of Alistair Brownlee and Javier Gomez Noya were in their primes. Since 2020, though, injury has often left him stricken and it remains to be seen how much of the running firepower of old remains.
However, just as we cannot project what might be with young athletes like Taylor Knibb and Hellwig or athletes that could still develop like Wilde, Coninx and Hauser, we cannot project what might be with Luis. He has the advantage of having proven he can win like in multiple ways. On those grounds, we cannot say for sure he won’t do so again.
To be hesitant over Luis on the basis of age and injury would mean Flora Duffy should also be called into question. After all, she is older and missed all of the 2023 season (although she did win a race with a field-leading run quite a bit more recently than Luis).
Still, in light of their world title-winning histories and their success within this shortened Olympic cycle, they cannot be written off just yet.
Taking a broader view, the absence of men’s multi-strategy athletes aside from Luis may explain the wild rides that have been the conclusions of the men’s 2022 and 2023 WTCS.
One their day anyone can be beaten because no one has a multi-strategy. It only takes one day to go wrong and then the entire Series is open.
2021 was such a weird, short season that two wins and Olympic gold was enough for Blummenfelt to win the world title. By contrast, winning three races has not been enough for Yee in either 2022 or 2023.
Boiled down to simplest form, Yee and Wilde are a bad swim away from losing while Bergere is a breakaway from winning and Coninx is a bad Yee/Wilde swim away from winning.
With such an unprecedented concentration of top end talent in the men’s Series, the margins are as fine as they have ever been. For any man to rise above, then, they may have to become multi-strategy athletes in the way the likes of Brownlee, Gomez and Luis were in the past.
On that front, one thing is certainly true. It is infinitely easier said than done.
