Ahead of the 2023 season, we thought we would put together two rankings, one for men and one for women, of who we consider to be the top-30 triathletes in World Triathlon racing.
This is not intended as a prediction for the year but rather more of a survey of how we feel the field stands going into the new season. We have tried to strike the balance between who would win on any given day and who would perform best over the course of a season.
To put the rankings together, we prioritised WTCS performances, followed by World Cups and Continental Championships. There is always a balance to be found though. Our inclination is to treat a medal at a World Cup more favourably than a top-20 at a WTCS race. At the same time, we’ve tried to balance WTCS medals with consistency in terms of top-10 finishes.
As a rule, we have leaned towards a younger athlete if we feel they are likelier to maintain or exceed their recent levels compared with a slightly older athlete that has not necessarily replicated previous heights for a couple of years.
At the same time, there are a couple of names included for athletes that have reached outstanding heights in the sport but for various reasons, such as injury or absence, have not quite had results at similar levels in the past couple of years. In such cases, we have made a judgement call whether we think said athletes still have a realistic shot of attaining high levels this year.
There will always be an element of subjectivity in these so feel free to disagree with any names or suggest your own in the comments below.
30) Gianluca Pozzatti ITA
It was a tough call between Pozzatti and his compatriot Michele Sarzilla. Sarzilla was more consistent at the WTCS level and finished 17th overall in the Series. He also a best WTCS finish of 8th in Cagliari, which was his only top-10.
Pozzatti, meanwhile, came 7th in Cagliari. While Sarzilla was the more consistent athlete of the two over the course of the season, the key factor that put Pozzatti ahead of Sarzilla and others was that he won the Miyazaki World Cup in October.
In Miyazaki, he combined the second fastest bike split with the fastest run split of the day. In addition, Pozzatti achieved two 7th place finishes at the Bergen World Cup and Valencia World Cup.
Currently, he is 31st in the World Triathlon rankings. On balance, though, Pozzatti has shown recent improvement at the WTCS level and World Cup success to take 30th here.
29) David Castro Fajardo ESP
Castro Fajardo was a late bloomer in 2022. He did not make an international start until September, when he finished 5th at the Valencia World Cup. A few weeks later, he put together a brilliant performance to finish 5th at WTCS Cagliari.
A DNF in Miyazaki followed, however Castro Fajardo confirmed his class with a win at the World Cup in Viña del Mar. In many respects Castro Fajardo has a similar performance profile to Pozzatti. Both won a World Cup and recorded a top-10 WTCS finish.
At the WTCS Final in Abu Dhabi, he ended up 25th after slipping away from the front pack having been fifth out of the water.
Despite winning the Spanish Championships in 2022, we have not seen a lot of Castro Fajardo in the past few years. Prior to Cagliari, his last WTCS appearance was in 2017.
In 2021, he won the two European Cup races he entered and, prior to that, Castro Fajardo also had two other World Cup wins to his name.
In a sense, he has suffered from the plethora of talent available to Spain during the years of Gomez, Mola and Alarza. Now, though, Castro Fajardo is an athlete that combines an elite swim with a world class run and is perhaps as strong over the Sprint distance as he is over the Olympic distance.
Recently, we predicted that Castro Fajardo would make the Spanish Olympic team in 2024 and going into this season we think he will have a few big performances up his sleeve.
28) Gustav Iden NOR
Let’s start off by saying Gustav Iden is a legend in the making in long distance triathlon.
However, we are only evaluating him over short distance racing.
He has two WTCS medals, both from Bermuda. He also has World Cup wins to his name, albeit not from 2022.
The issue is that Iden’s style only really suits hard courses. In 2019, he finished 4th at the WTCS Final in Lausanne on a tricky course.
He does not have the speed to threaten the best on a flat course, nor over the Sprint distance in general. As an example, he finished 48th at WTCS Leeds. He has also has finished in the top-10 of a WTCS Sprint race once in his career (he came 9th in Abu Dhabi in 2018).
His return in 2022 at Bermuda and Abu Dhabi also showed that, for all his cycling prowess, he cannot overpower a cooperating breakaway. As an aside, his 9th place in Bermuda was his best finish of the year.
Iden makes the top-30 mostly on a hunch that he could medal at an Olympic distance race if the conditions go his way. He came 8th at the Tokyo Olympics and on a tougher course he could improve on that. Looking at the 2023 calendar, maybe Pontevedra would be his best shot.
To be blunt, Iden does not have the swim or the top end running speed to win. Obviously, he could surprise us and step up a gear in 2023. However, if he did not have the tools to win WTCS races prior to stepping up to long distance, it seems unlikely that racing long distance will make him faster on his return.
27) Tim Hellwig GER
We noted Hellwig as one of the U23 athletes ageing up in 2023 to keep an eye on. One of the big reasons for that was his win at WTCS Hamburg in 2021.
That day, he produced a mature performance ahead of his years, one that was coupled with a brilliant run split.
Admittedly, Hamburg was a weaker field than normal in 2021 as it came after both the Olympic Games and the 2021 WTCS Final in Edmonton. Hellwig still had to win the race though. He also won a silver medal at the World U23 Championships in 2021.
Now, Hellwig’s position in this list essentially ignores his current world ranking of 69th. One way to interpret his rankings is that his 2022 bore the hallmarks of a classic young, developing athlete that is still finding their feet at the top level. Just because he won a WTCS race that does not make him the finished product. Assuming he has learned from last year, he will be better for it going forwards.
Hellwig might not have the consistency of someone like Kenji Nener, who finished 15th in the 2022 WTCS but has not made the top-30 here. However, he has crucially shown an ability to win medals.
As he matures, that ability to get across a finish line first will be vital.
26) Matthew McElroy USA
In a brilliant run of form, McElroy won three World Cup medals in 2022. After a bronze medal in Valencia, he won silver in Karlovy Vary. He then capped off the sequence in perfect fashion by winning the World Cup in Tongyeong.
At each race, he demonstrated the running ability that once made him a WTCS medallist.
Recently, he has not quite translated his World Cup form into WTCS results. In 2022, he had a best finish of 10th, which came at the Final in Abu Dhabi. The rest of his finishes came between 13th and 20th. To a large degree, this can be explained away by the injury trouble he has experienced which forced him to rediscover his best form.
By the end of 2022, McElroy had risen to 13th in the world rankings and finished 19th in the overall WTCS. Going by those numbers and his World Cup medals, 26th in this list feels a tad low.
This is mainly a result of the question mark over his WTCS form. A lot of the athletes ahead of him have won WTCS medals more recently and are younger than him. Moreover, outside of his WTCS silver from Leeds in 2019 and his latest 10th place in Abu Dhabi, McElroy has not finished in the top-10 in his remaining 23 WTCS races.
As a result, despite his World Cup performances, he does not yet have the volume of WTCS top-10s and medals to rank higher in this list.
25) Jacob Birtwhistle AUS
Birtwhistle’s inclusion is a judgement call. We will say that from the start.
Even with a full quota of races, he finished outside the top-50 of the 2022 WTCS. By his standards, it was not a good year.
The thing with Birtwhistle, though, is he has one of the highest ceilings of any man in the sport. A former international runner as a Junior, he won WTCS Leeds and WTCS Hamburg in 2019. A few wobbles that season meant he did not contend for the title. However, he also won three WTCS medals in 2018.
Going by pre-pandemic form, it would be fair to put him in the top-10 in the world as a single day racer.
If we just look at 2022 form, there will some athletes that justifiably feel they had better years and should be ranked ahead of him.
The question is, then, which Birtwhistle is the true reflection of his level?
On talent alone, it feels wrong to leave him out of the top-30. After all, he has more WTCS medals than a number of athletes in the top-10. Given his 2022 form, 25th seems like a fair middle ground. If Birtwhistle recaptures his pre-2020 form (he is young enough to do so and we suspect he will), then he will rocket up the rankings.
