Swim
Some athletes fared better than others in the choppy sea conditions in Napier. In the men’s race, Alessio Crociani was the only man to break under the 9 minute barrier as he led the way in a time of 8:59.
The home duo of Dylan McCullough and Tayler Reid were the next out, with the former being right on Crociani’s heels. Brandon Copeland followed in a time of 9:09 while the bronze medallist, Alberto Gonzalez Garcia, was one of three men to exit in 9:10 (the other two were Crociani’s teammate Nicola Azzano and British athlete Daniel Dixon).
Interestingly, while only three men made it out within 10 seconds of Crociani, nine men were less than 5 seconds behind Copeland.
In the women’s race, Sophie Alden was the quickest in the water and completed the swim in 9:54. Her teammate and fellow medallist, Olivia Mathias was 3 seconds back while Emma Jeffcoat was, as is normally the case, towards the front.
Zsanett Kuttor-Bragmayer was the final woman to nip under 10 minutes for the 750m as she stopped the clock in 9:59. Eva Goodisson and Melanie Santos then recorded splits of 10:02 and 10:03 as both made the front pack.
Bike
The British pair of Ben Dijkstra and Samuel Dickinson produced the quickest bike splits of the day in 25:05 and 25:08, respectively. The duo were able to make it up to the front pack after losing around 10 seconds in the swim.
Ricardo Batista, Shachar Sagiv and Sebastian Wernersen then shared the third fastest split in 25:09. The race winner, Callum McClusky, had the fourth fastest bike split (25:10) which placed him in the front back entering T2 and went a long way to setting up his victory.
Sam Parry and Hayden Wilde then followed with splits of 25:11 and 25:12, respectively. Wilde thus did not lose any major time on the bike. The deficit he faced from the swim, though, (after his 9:45 split) proved fatal to his gold medal hopes.
Meanwhile, Paulina Klimas was the top cyclist in the women’s field. Klimas had been close to the front in the swim, hitting a time of 10:04. However, she ceded a few seconds in T1. She therefore had to produce a big first lap to latch onto the lead pack.
The race winner, Sophie Linn, was in a similar boat. She swam a time of 10:06 but then produced a bike split of 28:47 (3 seconds slower than Klimas) to make it to the front. Goodisson matched Linn’s split to the second.
Santos (28:49), Jeffcoat (28:50) and Bragmayer (28:50) all made it into the front pack after fast swims. The top swimmers, Alden and Mathias, were then only a few seconds slower after they were caught on the first bike lap.
Run
Wilde may not have had the best swim of the day but he was phenomenal on the run. He ripped a 13:52 5km split as he picked off one athlete another the other. With another couple of hundred metres (or a kilometre), he might have even caught McClusky and taken the win. As it was, the home star had too much work to do to win the race.
For his own efforts, McClusky ended the day with the second fastest run split. The Wilde-McClusky axis therefore repeated their position as the fastest runners from the New Plymouth World Cup in 2023.
Sagiv then completed the top-3 splits as he placed 4th overall.
Like Wilde, Hugo Milner did not have the best day in the water (although he was noticeably quicker than Wilde) and then he failed to make in-roads on the bike. His 14:21 split on the run nonetheless demonstrated the danger he poses.
Gonzalez and McCullough then clocked 14:22 to round out the top-5 splits and lock out the top-5 overall positions.
The top women run splits were unusual insofar that the top-3 times went to athletes that did not finish in the top-5 overall. Sereno (7th), Zane (6th) and Thornbury (9th) made it into the top-10 overall however they had lost too much time earlier in the race to threaten the podium.
Jolanda Annen and Ainsley Thorpe had the next fastest splits in 16:32 (10 seconds behind Sereno) while Maria Carolina Velasquez Soto clocked 16:35.
The race winner, Linn, actually only managed the seventh fastest run of the field in 16:36.
