We are drawing closer to the top-10 triathletes in the world and in this section there are some very big hitters. Any of the women listed below could nab a WTCS medal this season or finish in the top-10 of the overall Series.
18) Summer Rappaport USA
Summer Rappaport has won numerous World Cups as well as a WTCS race (Edmonton 2016). Altogether, she has six WTCS medals which is the most of any woman in this section.
In many respects, 2022 was a mixed season for Rappaport. It started well with a bronze medal at WTCS Hamburg (2021). Moreover, she finished 5th at WTCS Montreal.
However, around those results, she finished outside the top-20 at WTCS Leeds and WTCS Hamburg (2022). After a summer training block, Rappaport rallied and won a bronze medal at the World Cup in Karlovy Vary. That day, she was the only woman able to get close to Bianca Seregni in the swim and rode well over a notoriously tough bike course.
However, that result was then followed by finishes of 27th, 25th and 28th at the subsequent WTCS races in Cagliari, Bermuda and Abu Dhabi, respectively.
In 2021, Rappaport won a silver medal at WTCS Yokohama. Moreover, she won three WTCS medals in 2019.
Rappaport is therefore a bit of a puzzle. Given her past few seasons, she is liable to medal at a WTCS race this year just as she is to finish outside of the top-20 at a race.
Her medal hit rate means there is a strong case to rank her towards the top-10. However, her lack of consistency hurts her a little. Her final 2022 WTCS ranking was 16th while her current world ranking is 20th. The midpoint of those two rankings feels about right as an indicator of how Rappaport races over a season. When things click for her, though, she is capable of producing fantastic single day performances.
17) Julie Derron SUI
Derron ended 2021 in spellbinding form. A win at the Karlovy Vary World Cup was followed two weeks later with a triumph at the European Championships in Valencia.
Derron was also a World Cup winner in 2019, while in 2021 and 2022 she won silver medals at the Arzachena World Cup
After Arzachena last spring, Derron did not ostensibly quite hit the same heights in 2022. Her next best finish was a 6th place at the European Championships in Munich.
However, the raw numbers do not do justice for the development she showed in 2022 at the WTCS level.
She finished 9th at WTCS Leeds which represented a personal best WTCS finish. She also finished 13th in Hamburg and Cagliari in 2022
Prior to last year, Derron had a best WTCS finish of 24th which came from Hamburg in 2019. Given that she did not race the WTCS in 2021, an element of acclimatisation was necessary last year.
Derron finished 23rd overall in the Series, which is behind some athletes ranked so far, including Rappaport. However, it is worth noting that Derron is five years younger than Rappaport and has shown that she is still progressing. She has also recently shown the ability to win major races.
16) Kirsten Kasper USA
Kasper finished 12th in the overall WTCS in 2022 after achieving three top-10 finishes, with a 7th in Hamburg (2021), 9th in Yokohama and 6th in Cagliari.
In recent times, she also won two 2021 World Cup medals.
Kasper has one WTCS medal to her name, a bronze from Yokohama in 2017. Alongside that, she has eleven finishes inside the top-6. As a result, Kasper has been knocking on the door for a second WTCS medal for some time.
Kasper is strong across all three disciplines and it is easy to get the sense that she is really just one stroke of luck away from a second WTCS medal.
Separating Kasper from her American team mate Rappaport is not the easiest. Rappaport has more WTCS medals and has won the majority of them more recently. Kasper, however, is on balance the more consistent athlete.
She has finished outside the top-18 of a WTCS race only twice since 2016. As a result, whether in a single day race or over the course of a season, it is a very safe bet that Kasper would be 16th or better.
15) Anabel Knoll GER
After qualifying for the German Olympic team in 2021 via the Mixed Team Relay, Anabel Knoll has stepped up to a new level.
Following Tokyo, she recorded her best ever WTCS finishes with 11th places in Montreal and Hamburg. In 2022, she went even better still.
Across the first half of the season, she recorded three top-10s, finishing 7th in Yokohama, 8th in Leeds and then 6th in Hamburg. It seemed she was growing in strength with every race. However, a combination of injury and illness undermined the second half of her season and her results did not match the highs of her summer.
Until her injury, though, Knoll was trending in one direction. Born in 1996, she’s younger than Kasper, Derron and Rappaport and the improvement curve she showed indicated that there may have been more to come.
By the end of 2022, Knoll finished 13th in the overall WTCS however she was the best finisher of athletes without a full quota of scores. With only four scores, Knoll would have been close to breaking into the top-10 had she been able to score another race with her early season form.
With the combination of WTCS top-10s and an improving profile, Knoll will no doubt be looking to go even better in 2023.
14) Alberte Kjaer Pedersen DEN
Pedersen is one of the next generation of women trying to break through in the WTCS. In 2022, she made her biggest splash yet by finishing 4th at WTCS Montreal.
That result does a lot of work in Pedersen’s rank as she had one other top-15 WTCS finish in the 2022 season (14th in Hamburg in 2021). Alongside that, she finished 16th in Cagliari and 17th in Hamburg in 2022.
Pedersen was only born in 1998 so she is clearly still developing as an athlete. At the end of 2022, though, she took another big step by winning the World Cup in Miyazaki.
In addition, one thing that counts in Pedersen’s favour is her performance at the 2021 World U23 Championships. She won the silver medal in Edmonton that day on the back of a blistering 34:04 run split. For comparison, in the women’s WTCS Final on the same run course, only silver medallist Leonie Periault was faster.
Pedersen competed internationally in athletics as a Junior, so her running credentials have been known for some time. However, that run in Edmonton really marked her out as one to watch. Once she is able to develop a little more strength to compete at the Senior level, she will be able to deploy that speed more regularly and will likely win a number of WTCS medals.
Prior to Edmonton, she also won the World Cup in Huatulco in 2021. As a result, with two World Cup wins in two years, a WTCS 4th place and as one of the young athletes with the most potential coming through, Pedersen takes 14th in the 2023 TriStats rankings.
13) Lisa Tertsch GER
Lisa Terstch has a very similar profile to Pedersen and the pair are separated by fine margins.
Like Pedersen, she was born in 1998 and was an international runner as a Junior. At WTCS Hamburg (2022) she was able to utilise that running speed to win the bronze medal in her best WTCS finish yet.
Tertsch also won the Valencia World Cup in September. To go with that, she won a silver at the Pontevedra World Cup. As an aside, Pontevedra will host the WTCS Final in 2023 and if Tertsch can finish in the top-8 there she will lock up her Olympic qualification for Paris.
Previously, Tertsch won a World Cup in 2019 and took a bronze medal in 2020. She therefore has a track record of medal success despite her youth.
Pedersen beat Tertsch at the World U23 Championships in 2021 where Tertsch finished 8th. However, in 2019 Terstch won the bronze medal at the World U23 Championships in Lausanne.
There is every possibility that Tertsch and Pedersen chase one another up the rankings in the coming years. Both are brilliant runners and showed flashes of inconsistency in 2022.
Sooner rather than later, they will outgrow World Cups and WTCS medals will be the currency with which they measure themselves. The challenge will be to find the consistency that turns medals into WTCS titles.
