Over the Sprint distance, there is only so much time for the race to unfold. Being around an hour long, it finds itself in a curious space of sharing traits with the Super Sprint and Olympic distances without quite fully resembling either.
At the shorter, sharper affair of WTCS Hamburg, decisive moments tended to happen at once rather than over the course of sustained periods of pressure as often seen with the Olympic distance.
WTCS Sunderland was somewhere in the middle of the two types.
Swim
The men’s swim time distribution in Sunderland provided perhaps the most perfect bell curve of the season.
The race followed the most conventional pattern possible with the likes of Chase McQueen and Diego Moya setting the pace at the front with an ever-growing line of athletes following until the bulk of the field emerged.
With the smooth rise and fall of the line, it appears that there were no real gaps in the field beyond a few seconds.
By contrast, the women’s swim looked a little different.
Whereas the highest men’s density of athletes came at around 12 seconds, in the women’s race that point came at around the 25 second mark. The women’s concentration also started at a lower point (around 0.005) as Therese Feuersinger gained a couple of seconds over the field. In the men’s race, the concentration started closer to 0.014.
As the women’s density rose its peak, the line was not quite as smooth as the men’s race, implying that the field was clustered in slightly different places.
The women’s swim also held its peak density for a little longer.
From this, one inference is that the men’s field coped better with the pace set at the front than the women’s field.
Bike
After a hard first lap, a breakaway of thirteen men formed at the front to exploit the few seconds they had earned in the water and T1. Throughout the first half of the bike, a conventional chase took place between the breakaway and the main pack as the leaders tried to force the issue.
There were clear hints of the pressure as five athletes fell away from the front two packs over the second lap. A further three athletes then dropped behind on the third lap.
By the end of the fourth lap, the front two packs had come together. Yet there was more to come on the bike. Leo Bergere, Ricardo Batista and Tayler Reid broke clear to gain a small lead by the end of the fifth lap. Their attack forced another rise in pace, slimming the chase group once more.
Unlike Hamburg, then, the Sprint distance in Sunderland gave time in the men’s race for the bike to unfold and allowed for a breakaway to pressure the main field. At the same time, the shorter course compared the Olympic distance meant that the breakaway were hunting for leads of around 10 seconds at best.
As such, the purpose of the break in Sunderland was not necessarily to build up a big lead. There simply was not enough time for that. Rather, the goal was to raise the tempo and pressure the chasers. We can see how the chase group suffered as it lost members and the effects of that may have then told on the run.
Bergere was one of the key drivers of the front group and his green line shows how he was one of the fastest men on the course during the first and last laps. Both moments are relevant as that is when he managed to make the initial break of thirteen and then the subsequent break of three stick.
The pace of the front pack told as McQueen was dropped on the second lap and fell back into the main group.
Hayden Wilde did not jump onto the pace as he usually does on the first lap which saw him stick with the main group. Thereafter, he and Tim Hellwig (the fastest cyclist of the day) rode at a consistent pace towards the front of the pack.
You may also notice how Pierre Le Corre, the race winner, eased off a little on lap 3. He was almost 10 seconds slower on that lap which could have represented him taking some time to rest his legs ahead of the finale. Controlling his effort at the midpoint of the bike may well have contributed to him being able to launch such a devastating sprint finish at the end of the race.
The women’s bike showed a similar story to the men’s race.
Again, we see a breakaway group at the front of the race that forced the main pack to chase. The first two packs were smaller in the women’s race and there was a notable third group that fell away as the bike progressed.
Unlike the men’s race, the women’s race did not really see many women drop away from the first two groups. Nevertheless, the presence of the breakaway created a need for the main pack to increase their effort to chase, especially given the speed of the runners in the breakaway.
In essence, the main pack had to chase for three laps and then, once the connection was made on the fourth lap, the breakaway could afford to rest their legs.
You can see how Cassandre Beaugrand and Annika Koch were able to relax (relatively-speaking) on the fourth lap. They rode almost 15 seconds slower than the chasers, allowing them to conserve vital energy.
On the final lap, the entire main pack tried to do the same and likewise slowed to the pace of Beaugrand and Koch. Having been able to recover for an extra lap, Beaugrand and Koch (and the rest of the breakaway) would have been a little fresher on the run.
Beaugrand rode a smart tactical race throughout. On the first lap, she had a gap to the field and rode with Feuersinger. Yet she did not push the pace. Instead, she waited for the five athletes behind to catch her and form a lead pack of seven. Over the next two laps, she upped her effort to force the main pack to expend energy trying to close the gap. By the time the fourth lap came around, she had succeeded in pressuring the chasers and could sit up a little and prepare mentally for the run.
The success of the women’s breakaway was clearest when it came to the medallists. Three of the four fastest runners (Beaugrand, Emma Lombardi and Koch, the medallists) came from the breakaway. Meanwhile, Gwen Jorgensen, the second fastest runner, was not in the main pack. The lesson here is that the breakaway were overall able to expend less energy on the bike once they had built up the lead they needed and forced the hand of the chasers.
Several of the chase pack ran well and populated the top-10. However, they did not have the extra speed of the medallists on the run. One argument would be to say that the fastest runners simply ran the fastest splits. That, though, would neglect the tactical nature of the race and would not do justice to how energy management influenced the ability to run a fast final 5km.
Run
The men’s run distribution was a little more concentrated behind the fastest runner than the women’s race. The men’s density peaked at around the 50 second mark while the women’s peaked around the 80 second mark.
On the men’s side, the takeaway is that the men’s run did not break up very much. Of course, gaps appeared between different sub-groups, but no one was quite able to strike clear. As a result, the men’s finish yielded a sprint finish rather than breaking apart earlier.
The women’s run was a little more stretched out than the men’s race. Unlike the men’s race, this suggests the bike may have done more to sap the legs of the athletes.
At the same time, it is also a comment on the speed of the fastest women’s runners. All three medallists out-split twelve men on the run. Beaugrand alone out-ran sixteen men, representing almost a third of the men’s field. With such speed at the front of the race, it makes sense that the gradient of the distribution curve is shallower.
All in all, then, Sunderland was an in-between race. On the one hand, it had aspects of Super Sprint racing, such as a uniform men’s swim and a tightly-bunched men’s run distribution. On the other, the men’s and women’s bikes showed hints of Olympic distance strategy, albeit with a Sprint distance twist.
