This season, the race to the world title in the men’s field more or less boils down to four main contenders.
While that is not to say that no one else can win the Series, it is an acknowledgement that there are four favourites that are currently clear of the rest of the field.
WTCS race winners like Vincent Luis, Jelle Geens and Dorian Coninx could take a run at the title. Moreover, there are dark horses like Morgan Pearson that could spring a surprise.
However, they are not quite operating at the same level of expectation as the four men listed below.
So without further ado, let’s dive into the challengers for this year’s crown.
Léo Bergere
We start with the defending world champion.
Coming into the 2022 season, Bergere was a man quietly on the up. Bronze medals in Hamburg in 2020 and Edmonton in 2021 had signalled that his star was rising.
A brilliant start to his 2022 saw him take bronze in Yokohama, silver in Leeds and then bronze in Montreal. In doing so, he confirmed himself as a threat across all distances. Leeds was a particularly impressive performance given the way he staged a two man breakaway with Luis and narrowly missed out on the win.
A 4th place in Hamburg followed, as did the European crown in Munich.
All in all, by the time Bergere arrived in Abu Dhabi for the WTCS Final, he had consolidated himself in 3rd place in the Series and would have been able to reflect on a sterling year.
Bergere, however, was not done.
In a stunning show, he broke away with a small group and stunned the field to take the win and with it the world title.
Indeed, his performance in Abu Dhabi was perhaps the most captivating since Hot Chocolate released You Sexy Thing in 1975.
Very few people anticipated Bergere’s triumph. We certainly did not.
Now, Bergere enters 2023 as the champion and the man to beat.
He may just be the most complete athlete in the men’s field. Across each discipline, he is exceptionally strong and can race in virtually any style. In addition, he will likely be a beneficiary of what looks to be a concerted French strategy this season.
There will be days in which one of his rivals gets the better of him, particularly on the run. He is not yet a dominant force so to speak. Nevertheless, he has fewer off days than his rivals and has demonstrated an ability to rise to the moment on the biggest occasions. Those qualities will stand him in good stead for a season-long competition.
Alongside this, he has a maturity about him.
Once the sharp end of the year comes into focus in Pontevedra, if Bergere is in contention it may be impossible to bet against him.
Alex Yee
With three wins in 2022, Yee was one of the stars of the season. His wins in Yokohama and Cagliari were particularly dominant and highlighted how lethal his running is over the Olympic distance.
There is a strong case to be made that Yee is the best runner in the field. Having run the second fastest Olympic distance run split of WTCS history in Yokohama, few will fancy their chances going head-to-head on foot against him.
Following his win in Leeds in 2021, Yee actually has the most WTCS wins to his name of any of the four contenders noted here.
As a fixture of the British Mixed Team Relay, he has confirmed his speed over the short distance on numerous occasions. As if it needed further proof, he was also in near total control over the Super Sprint distance on the way to gold in Montreal last summer.
To go with that, he is the youngest of the favourites which suggests he may have the greatest scope to improve.
At the same time, Yee is mature beyond his years. A nasty bike crash in 2017 at the Cagliari World Cup proved one of several stepping stones in a broader journey that has given him perspective.
With that in mind, it is possible to see him solving the current weakness in his arsenal. Right now, Yee’s Plan A is virtually unmatched. If he is on song, he will beat pretty much anyone on the run. But what about when he needs Plan B? What if someone breaks away or he isn’t on top form on the run?
As yet, we have not seen enough evidence to suggest Yee has a Plan B. In his last two WTCS races of 2022, he missed the podium as Plan A failed him. He has all the faculties he needs to rectify this and, if he is to win the Series this year, he might have to do so sooner rather than later.
Hayden Wilde
In 2022, Wilde won two WTCS golds and two silvers and was denied the world title by the narrowest of margins. Over the course of last year, he developed into one of the most exciting racers in the field.
While his strength has traditionally been on the bike, last season he established himself as the closest challenger to Yee on the run.
We have to acknowledge the fact that Wilde has not beaten Yee yet. That will be a monkey to get off his back. However, there is an important caveat to note.
Intriguingly we did not see Wilde and Yee go mano-a-mano in a fair fight over the Sprint distance in 2022. In Leeds, Yee crashed out. Yee then did not race in Hamburg. Finally, at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, a penalty put paid to Wilde’s hopes having built a lead into T2.
Wilde has the running speed to match Yee over 5km. Indeed, in Hamburg last year he entered the top-10 all time splits over the Sprint distance.
Moreover, if we note that Wilde has yet to beaten Yee, we have to simultaneously acknowledge that Yee has never won a WTCS Sprint distance race. Wilde, by contrast, has won two. Of course that could change this year but that certainly puts events like Montreal and Sunderland in Wilde’s sights and potentially could be opportunities to steal a march over Yee.
Physically, then, Wilde is the equal of his rivals.
The challenge confronting him this year will be mental.
Losing so narrowly in 2022 will leave a mark, however small. It will to Yee too. Maybe Wilde races a little more impetuously to prove himself going forward. Maybe he goes the other way and tries to be more conservative. We won’t know until we see it and we won’t know if it is the right choice until after the event. That means there will be an awful lot of post hoc rationalisation to go with it.
To boil it down to its simplest form, Wilde’s career thus far has basically consisted of vibes. He surprised everyone to take bronze at the Tokyo Olympic Test Event in 2019 as a 21 year old. Then, as a 23 year old, he repeated his bronze medal at the real thing. At that point he had not won a WTCS medal but no matter, the following year he breezed to four of them.
Abu Dhabi, by contrast, was the first real setback of his career.
Will the vibes rally? Or will Wilde have to find something deeper within himself? Everything points to him being able to do so.
Kristian Blummenfelt
The fourth contender was the man of 2021. It is strange to think that barely 18 months after winning both the Olympic and world titles, becoming the first man to do so in the same year no less, Blummenfelt enters the season as one of many challengers and not as the undisputed favourite.
The main reason for this is his absence from the circuit for much of last year in pursuit of long distance glory. While he was away, other athletes leapfrogged him.
No one has successfully stepped down from long distance to short distance so there is a big question mark over whether Blummenfelt will be able to do so. This is particularly true if we define success as winning the world title.
Blummenfelt could have a successful year by winning a few medals and being in the mix. However, as a former champion, he has to return to his old status for his return to be considered triumphant.
In 2021, he took wins at WTCS Yokohama and WTCS Edmonton to go with his Tokyo gold. In each of those races, he confirmed to the world what an outstanding runner he had become.
He did not have a superlative return to action in 2022 and in both of his appearances he was caught out by the speed of the swim and by a breakaway. He may be one of the strongest cyclists on the long distance scene, but Bermuda and Abu Dhabi showed last year that he cannot out-ride a cohesive pack.
All of his rivals also look better over the Sprint distance.
However, the Olympic distance races are apparently worth more points based on a reading of this year’s World Triathlon scoring criteria. That could play into Blummenfelt’s hands.
If he can get his race right over the Olympic distance, he could put himself in the box seat going into Pontevedra.
Once there, he has just as much experience of winning a Final as Bergere.
