The Swim
One thing stands out above all else: the dominance displayed by Bianca Seregni in the water. After she exited, you can see a drop of 20 seconds until another athlete left the water. Such was her pace, it took almost 30 seconds after Seregni finished the swim for more than one swimmer to exit the water together. At the 40 second mark, we can see a small concentration of women that had also generated a bit of a gap. Normally, the first such spike in the density of athletes represents one of the bigger groups.
However, due to Seregni’s speed, the biggest spikes were actually one minute down and 100 seconds behind.
Seregni was over 20 seconds faster than the next best woman. It is exceedingly rare to see an athlete put so much time into the field in the swim, particularly at a world championships.
Meanwhile, the men’s swim was a very different story. With the biggest peak in the density of athletes coming only 10 seconds after the swim leader Alessio Crociani left the water, it is clear that the swim was very bunched and that no one really put any pressure on the field.
Interestingly, the last man got out of the water 100 seconds behind Crociani whereas in the women’s race the biggest cluster of athletes was actually 100 seconds behind Seregni.
With such a clustered swim, it was no surprise that a massive pack formed at the front of the men’s race on the bike.
The Bike
One thing that really stands out on the development of the lap times on the bike is just how much Kate Waugh and Jessica Fullagar increased their speed with their attack. As Waugh and Fullagar were practically inseparable on the bike, the green line on the above graph also represents Fullagar pretty well. Their attack on lap 6 was so clearly decisive and the remnants of the lead pack had no answer.
What we had not fully anticipated was that on the prior lap, lap 5, the leading group had actually lost time to the chase and had their slowest lap by 20 seconds. With the pace dropping, the timing of the Waugh-Fullagar attack makes a lot more sense.
We can also see that the other members of the leading group, such as Annika Koch, did not know how to react to the attack and simply leaked time for the rest of the bike, dropping behind the speed of the chase.
Further down the field, we can see how the chase pack (highlighted here by Tanja Neubert) rode a consistent pace on almost every lap. However, with the exception of lap 5, the main pack lost around 10 seconds per lap to the leaders throughout the bike.
In contrast to the women’s race, the men’s race saw very little action on the bike.
As much as Jamie Riddle tried to push the pace early on (his line is the yellow one), you can see that his repeated surges did not do a great deal in terms of separating the group over the whole bike.
One of the best cycling performances actually came from Maxime Fluri. His best lap came on lap 5 in which he bridged to the main group and you can see that his times then slowed to match the front pack on the subsequent lap. With such a large front group, it would have been difficult for Riddle and any other athletes looking to break away to split themselves from the group.
After such a tightly bunched swim and bike, in hindsight it was inevitable that the men’s championships would come down to a running race.
The Run
The key takeaway from the lap times on the run is just how much better Anahi Alvarez Corral was then the rest of the field. We have previously noted that she had the best run of all women bar Flora Duffy in Abu Dhabi, but at no point did it look like anyone would get close to her pace.
Alvarez Corral managed a first lap of 7:45 when no one else broke 8 minutes. By the time lap 4 rolled around, she ran over 30 seconds per lap better than the next fastest person on the course.
With that kind of running ability, she will have to watched carefully going forward. If she can develop her swim and bike, then she will be a truly remarkable proposition going forward.
In the elite women’s race in Abu Dhabi, only 3 women ran under 34 minutes (Duffy, Periault and Taylor-Brown). With her 32:39 split, Alvarez Corral may simply need to be able to limit her deficit to 2 minutes off the bike in future and she will be in contention for a medal.
Ahead of Alvarez Corral, we can see that Tanja Neubert started conservatively however finished the run as one of the fastest women on the course. Pacing was even more of an issue given the heat in Abu Dhabi and it is no surprise to see the lap times progressively become slower in general.
Similarly, we can see that Annika Koch had an aggressive start to the run and closed on Waugh on every lap. However, she left herself with too much to do on the run.
As with the bike, the men’s run was a close affair with several athletes pacing off one another. For the first and second lap, there was very little to separate the leading group.
It took Connor Bentley’s decisive kick on the final lap of the run to split the field. Although Gergely Kiss tried to go with him, he could not match Bentley’s surge.
Unlike the leading women, Bentley grew progressively faster after the second lap and, while most of the leaders could match that acceleration on lap 3, they had no answer on lap 4. If the race were to be replayed again, it seems like the second lap was ripe for an attack to shake up the field.
One interesting final point to note is that only 18 of the 57 finishers in the men’s U23 race actually out-ran the fastest female runner, Alvarez Corral.
