As was the case yesterday with the men ranked 12th to 7th, each of these women will be strong contenders to finish in the top-10 of the WTCS this year. Each, too, will be in with a shout of winning WTCS medals in 2023.
12) Miriam Casillas Garcia ESP
Since achieving her first WTCS top-10 in Yokohama in 2021, Casillas has gone from strength to strength. Last season, she had five finishes of 10th or better in the WTCS which helped to 10th overall in the Series.
Nowadays, she stands as one of the best runners in the field. Over in Olympic distance in particular, she has regularly shown an ability to eat into any lead on the run.
However, one thing that has limited her is her swim.
At the WTCS Final in Abu Dhabi, Casillas made the biggest comeback from T1 to the finish. She improved from 48th out of the water to 9th at the finish line. While that speaks to her strength on the bike and run, it also shows that sometimes her swim can hold her back.
One thing that stands out about Casillas, though, is how much she has improved in the last few years. It seems with every race she has crept closer to a first WTCS medal and there is something about her trajectory that makes a maiden medal in 2023 feel like it will happen.
All the athletes ranked ahead of her have a WTCS medal to their name; indeed most won one last season.
For that reason, Casillas has not yet broken into the top-10 here. However, it feels like she is on the cusp of taking another step forward which will see her break onto the podium.
11) Laura Lindemann GER
Lindemann enters this year after a 2022 season in which she progressed well. It started with a bang as she won WTCS Hamburg in September 2021. She then performend well in 2022, taking 6th in Leeds and 5th in Hamburg.
As the year progressed, Lindemann took silver at the European Championships in Munich and then finished 4th at WTCS Bermuda. Both results were notable as Lindemann has classically been better at the Sprint distance whereas they proved she is now a fully-formed athlete across all distances.
Ultimately, Lindemann finished 8th overall in 2022. Had the WTCS Final gone a little better, she could have contended for the top-5 in the Series.
On talent alone, Lindemann is probably a top-5 athlete, maybe even better. However, she sometimes can go missing in races and does not quite seize control of them like some of her counterparts.
There is a sense of promise has followed Lindemann throughout her career. She showed enormous potential as a young athlete after winning two World Junior titles and then the World U23 title in the space of three consecutive years.
Since then she has continued to grow, although there is a sense of more to come.
In most years, she can be relied upon to win a medal. The main issue, which is what holds her back here, is that all four of her WTCS medals have come in Hamburg. Obviously winning medals is a great achievement, but she may need to show that can she can win without the support of a home crowd.
Once she finally wins that medal outside of Hamburg, the sky is the limit.
10) Emma Lombardi FRA
On the note of potential, we come to a new rising star.
It felt a little like Emma Lombardi came out of nowhere at the start of 2022. At WTCS Yokohama, she finished 4th and gave the podium a real scare.
Maybe that should not have been such a surprise given she won the World U23 Championships in 2021. Still, it is rare for an athlete to have quite such a stellar WTCS debut, especially an athlete so young.
Later in the year, she followed that up with a bronze medal at the European Championships and a silver medal at WTCS Cagliari. She then ended her season with an 8th place at the WTCS Final in Abu Dhabi.
There are a lot of parallels between Lombardi’s and Lindemann’s seasons. Both had similar results and have comparable skillsets.
There are two factors, though, that edge Lombardi ahead here. The first is her age. In 2022, she was so good at such a young age that it is hard to believe there is not more to come.
The second factor comes from comparing Lombardi’s and Lindemann’s 4th place finishes. Whereas Lindemann had a strong run in Bermuda that vaulted her to 4th, she was never really in contention to win a medal. By contrast, Lombardi was within a shout of a medal until the final lap of the run and it took a big surge from Olympic champion Flora Duffy to deny her bronze.
It just feels like Lombardi is in the race a little more often while Lindemann still goes missing. It is a very minor difference and beyond that they are very similar athletes.
As was the case with Lindemann, once Lombardi wins more medals, she will be ranked higher.
9) Maya Kingma NED
Kingma really boinged into the upper tier of WTCS athletes in 2021. She started the year with a bronze at Yokohama, her first ever WTCS medal. Then she went even better by winning in Leeds.
Leeds showcased all of her best qualities; she was near the front in the swim, utterly superlative on the bike and then brought it home with a mature and controlled run.
Kingma picked up where she left off in 2022, starting her year with a 5th in Yokohama. In the end, she scored four top-10s last year, including a 6th in Bermuda in which she essentially raced on one leg.
Bermuda highlighted the best qualities of Kingma. She was the only athlete that could live with Flora Duffy on the bike once she made up the deficit from the swim and rode with her for the entire bike course. She then finished the course despite an ankle injury. While running might not have been the wisest decision in the world (look after injuries kids), it highlighted her tenacity.
Injuries have been a slight problem for Kingma since her Leeds triumph. However, he performance that day marked her out as one of the best athletes in the world. Moreover, but for her injury, she would likely have medalled in Bermuda this year.
Her lack of 2022 medals has seen her slide a couple of spots from where she could be. Then again, Kingma finished 9th overall in the 2022 WTCS and that feels like a fair ranking at this time.
8) Leonie Periault FRA
The past 18 months of Leonie Periault have been something to behold. After finishing 5th at the Tokyo Olympics, she produced a 5th place finish at WTCS Montreal (2021). A few weeks later, at the WTCS Final in Edmonton, she went even better by winning the silver medal with the fastest run of the day.
In 2022, she did not miss a beat as she won another WTCS silver medal in Yokohama, beating Flora Duffy no less.
While her summer was essentially lost to injury, she returned to earn a bronze medal at the Valencia World Cup and then won the Karlovy Vary World Cup.
To finish the year, she took 5th place at the WTCS Final in Abu Dhabi.
Periault is a fantastic runner and a case could be made for her being among the top-3 runners in the women’s field.
Since Tokyo, 5th or better has really been her level and she has shown solid consistency. We very nearly ranked her higher.
The only issue is that she missed a large chunk of 2022 and so did not have as many results as some of the athletes ranked ahead. Periault was a very strong athlete prior to 2020, but since then she has really taken herself to a new level. However, we have not seen her sustain that level over a full season, largely due to injury.
On her day, she is a spectacular triathlete. We just need to see her produce her outstanding races a little more frequently and for her to become a figure more in the overall battle rather than as a single day racer to be ranked higher.
7) Taylor Spivey USA
Spivey had so many near misses in 2022. With three 4th place WTCS finishes last year, she ended the season in 4th overall in the Series.
In total, she earned seven WTCS finishes in the top-8 last season and was the model of consistency. Likewise, in 2021, she won a bronze medal in Montreal and finished 4th and 6th in Yokohama and Edmonton, respectively.
On any given start line, it is a fairly safe bet that Spivey will be in the top-5 or thereabouts.
The sole reason she has not been ranked higher here is her lack of medals in 2022. It feels a little mean to hold that against her given she was so close so many times. Moreover, she also has two WTCS medals from 2019 so it is clear she can step onto the podium again.
However, each woman in the top-6 of this list won multiple WTCS medals last season and on balance that trumps Spivey’s consistency.
In her past fifteen WTCS appearances, Spivey has finished between 4th and 7th eleven times. She has one finish better than 4th (Montreal 2021) and three finishes outside the top-7 (with her lowest being 11th Abu Dhabi in 2021).
She just needs a little more luck to convert all of these opportunities into more regular medals.
