By taking place at the end of November, the 2022 World Triathlon Championship Series Final in Abu Dhabi was one of the latest elite triathlons that have ever been held in the year.
In 2021 the WTCS Final was held in late August in Edmonton, while in 2020 the only WTCS race of the pandemic-hit season was in Hamburg in early September. The 2019 Final was Lausanne in late August and both the 2017 and 2018 Finals in Rotterdam and Gold Coast, respectively, took place in September.
Looking ahead to next year, the 2023 Final will be in Pontevedra in late-September.
It is common that a lot of athletes race beyond the Final, whether in search of additional prize money or to chase points towards their world ranking and Olympic qualification. However, for a lot of the best athletes in the sport the window of late-September into early-October represents a vital part of their year as it is the most common window for an off-season.
There is no fixed approach to taking an off-season and different athletes will take differing amounts of time off. The primary reasons for taking such time off are to enable physical and mental recovery from the season just completed. At the best of times, triathlon is an arduous sport with training and racing taking their toll. To never rest and recuperate every now and then is often the best way to invite injury and long-term issues.
Off-seasons can be carried out in many ways but they frequently involve taking a week or two completely off, followed by a couple of weeks of very low level training to keep the body moving while allowing it to recover after a draining season. After this window, the road to rebuilding fitness begins.
The challenge a lot of athletes will now face is that late-November is 2 months later than the common end to their season and any off-season (assuming they are taking one) will take them essentially through to Christmas. Many athletes in this position will likely forego the popular early winter training camps in December.
If the return to structured training is later, conceivably around late-December or even early-January for many athletes, the likelihood is that they will return to fitness at a later date than normal. Of course, training methods can evolve and adapt but the amount of work it takes to train into peak condition does not usually change by that much.
For many athletes that prioritise the WTCS, they will have on paper a 5 month gap from WTCS Abu Dhabi to WTCS Yokohama in 2023. That theoretically sounds like plenty of time to unwind and rebuild. Yet it does not always work like that.
Most athletes will need some form of racing before Yokohama to get themselves into at least partial race shape. Others may have Olympic qualification on mind and look toward the early season World Cups that start in March.
To complicate things even further, the first WTCS race of 2023 is not even in May. Instead, the season opens in Abu Dhabi again on the first weekend of March. That is a three month turnaround from 2022 Final to first race of 2023.
There will therefore be a balance to find. Athletes will have to train enough to ensure they can take on the challenges of elite triathlon but also get back into racing early enough so they don’t miss the start of the season. It will a finer line than normal to juggle regaining fitness with the looming start to the new season.
There is no right way or wrong way of doing things and 2022 was always going to be a weird season coming off the pandemic. However the timing of the Final is such that a new challenge has been created for athletes going into the 2023 season.
