We are continuing our series on the best triathletes in the world and today we looking at women ranked 24th through to 19th.
24) Kate Waugh GBR
Kate Waugh won the World U23 Championships in style in 2022 with a swashbuckling breakaway on the bike.
That win was enough to put her ahead of compatriot Sian Rainsley. Waugh, though, had a strong 2022 beyond that performance. She finished 12th at WTCS Hamburg and WTCS Cagliari and won a bronze medal at the World Cup in Bergen.
To go with that, she won two World Cup medals in autumn 2021.
The key with Waugh is that she is a very well rounded athlete. Indeed, she has no real weakness in her skillset. That sets her up to strong over practically any distance. She maybe does not have the top end speed on the run or the power in the water to rival the very best yet. However, her win in Abu Dhabi shows that she has significant racing nous.
Sometimes how an athlete thinks in a race is the most important factor.
Waugh is currently 24th in the world rankings and, reflecting on those ranked ahead and behind, that feels a good indication of her level right now.
23) Erika Ackerlund USA
Ackerlund finished 22nd in the WTCS in 2022. She was a consistent figure in in top-20 and logged seven finishes in the Series of 20th or better.
Her best showing came at Hamburg (2021) where she finished 10th. Such was her consistency, though, Ackerlund was inside the top-15 five times.
Currently, she lacks a little of the top end running speed that would help over the Sprint distance. Despite that, she is a well balanced athlete across both Olympic and Sprint races.
In many respects, Ackerlund has a similar profile to Verena Steinhauser who ranked 26th earlier in this list. Ackerlund edges ahead by dint of being a slightly better swimmer and a couple of years younger.
One key point to highlight with Ackerlund is that Abu Dhabi was her first WTCS Final. She is not as experienced as many of her counterparts which suggests she has space to grow in the sport. Given that, it is possible to see her improving further and becoming a more established fixture in the top-10 as opposed to the top-15.
22) Natalie Van Coevorden AUS
Van Coevordon has lately been one of the most consistent athletes on the WTCS circuit.
Like Ackerlund, she recorded seven top-20 finishes in the season with her highest finish being 11th, a feat she achieved at both Leeds and Montreal. That put her 20th overall in the WTCS in 2022.
In many respects, Van Coevorden has a similar profile to Steinhauser and Ackerlund, with the trio showing high levels of consistency in 2022.
Van Coevorden finished outside the top-20 of a WTCS race only once last year (a 25th in Cagliari). In addition, she finished 12th at the WTCS Final in Edmonton in 2021.
The key for Van Coevorden is that she is a better swimmer than Ackerlund and Steinhauser. Of the three, she makes the front pack out of the water more frequently.
She also has a WTCS medal to her name (a bronze in Abu Dhabi in 2018) which shades it for her. Of the athletes that can be considered in the top-30 for their consistency, Van Coevorden has perhaps the highest ceiling.
21) Lena Meißner GER
Meißner really broke through at the end of the 2022 season.
After finishing 11th at both WTCS Cagliari and Bermuda, she produced a fantastic performance to win the bronze medal in Abu Dhabi. In Abu Dhabi, she showed that could hang with the likes of Flora Duffy, Taylor Knibb and Georgia Taylor-Brown in the breakaway and, crucially, she did not look out of place.
Those performances vaulted her to 14th in the WTCS. Prior to her run of form, Meißner had a best WTCS finish of 19th. She also had a best 2022 World Cup finish of 10th in Pontevedra.
In 2023, she will have two opportunities to lock up qualification for the German Olympic team. A top-8 finish at the Paris Test Event or the WTCS Final in Pontevedra will be her targets.
Meißner’s challenge, then, will be to build upon her recent form and demonstrate consistency. Her recent form would suggest that she should be a top-20 athlete, however she has not yet sustained it over a long enough period. As she is still young, it would not be a surprise to see get improve even further and challenge for WTCS medals on a regular basis.
20) Jess Learmonth GBR
Learmonth is a multiple medallist at the WTCS level. Her most recent WTCS hardware came in Leeds in 2021 when she won the silver medal. A brilliant swim-biker, Learmonth has been at the forefront of the women’s field for half a dozen years now.
On her day, she might be one of the few women that can rival the world champion, Flora Duffy, in the first two disciplines.
As a consequence of injury, we did not seen her really race in 2022. A 4th place at WTCS Abu Dhabi in 2021 indicated that she would be strong in 2022. However, a hip injury thwarted her season.
Learmonth’s ranking here is heavily influenced by that injury. Due to a lot of recency bias, there are athletes that have jumped ahead based on their 2022 performances.
It is entirely possible that Learmonth returns to the front of the race and re-asserts herself as a top-5 athlete. The hesitation, though, is her hip. It can be a difficult injury to overcome and so we do not want to say she is guaranteed to return straight back to the top.
We are therefore playing it safe with Learmonth. She has been a brilliant triathlete for years, but right now the recent form of other athletes put them ahead.
19) Bianca Seregni ITA
Seregni won the bronze medal at the World U23 Championships in Abu Dhabi. She also has no WTCS medals to her name. It therefore could be a bit out of place to rank her ahead of Waugh and Meißner who have recent medals and are of a similar age.
Seregni is actually younger than both Waugh and Meißner and is the youngest athlete so far in the women’s top-30.
The key with Seregni is her swim. She might just be the best swimmer in the women’s field. (Yes, we include Flora Duffy in that).
In Abu Dhabi, Seregni obliterated the field in the swim. She was 22 seconds ahead of the next closest woman and 36 seconds ahead of the main pack. Her split was also comfortably better than the best women in the WTCS Final on the same course.
Her performance was no surprise though. Previously, she had led out the swim at the Karlovy Vary World Cup and at WTCS Bermuda.
In Bermuda, that helped her to a 10th place finish which is her best WTCS finish (from two races in total). Meanwhile, she won a silver medal in Karlovy Vary to go with her bronze medal at the Huatulco World Cup from earlier in 2022.
Seregni therefore has a race template that works. She can go to it at every single race, particularly over the Olympic distance, safe in the knowledge that she will almost always be in T1 with the leaders and can make almost any breakaway.
With her approach, Seregni will win medals, especially at the World Cup level. The challenge will be to work on her run a little more so that she can contend more frequently at the WTCS level and for race wins. Once she does that, she will be among the very best triathletes in the world.
