Last but by no means least, it is time to take a look at who’s who on the men’s World Junior Championships starts lists from Oceania and Asia. To refresh your memories, you can view the European men here and the men from Africa and the Americas here.
Any appearance at a World Junior Championships is a landmark moment for an athlete. Each start should therefore be something to celebrate. Whatever happens at the race itself, it is important to take a moment and enjoy making it to such a high standard.
Oceania
Australia earned three slots at the Oceania Junior Championships in Taupo and filled them with Bradley Course, Mitchell Blackbourn and Thomas Feldmann.
Course will command much of the attention from the Australian team after he won the Senior Oceania Championships over the Olympic distance. In light of his triumph in Port Douglas, he will have the unique distinction of also racing at the World U23 Championships later in the year. He will become the first Australian man to attempt the double.
Course’s current level can essentially be summed up with the following stat. He sits in 26th place in the WTCS without having ever raced in the Series. His position is entirely the result of his Continental Championships win. Nonetheless, if you take Course’s age out of the equation, we are already talking about a guy that could make a dent at the world level.
In addition to his win in Port Douglas, he finished 7th at the Oceania Championships over the Sprint distance (and won silver in the U23 classification) and claimed the Oceania Junior title in Taupo. To round it all off, he finished 5th at the Oceania Cup in Wanaka.
Wanaka was perhaps one of the best indicators of his cycling ability as he out-split the entire field. There will be only a handful of athletes able to live with Course if he turns on the jets in Hamburg. Alternatively, he can hold fire until the run. Throughout the season, he has proven himself to be a top-class runner and has a good sense for timing his attacks.
He will be racing at the European Cup in Holten (the Senior race that is) two weeks before Hamburg and so will certainly be sharp. Will anyone be able to deny him the title? There are a lot of good athletes due to start but Course is riding an insane wave of momentum.
Joining Course will be Blackbourn and Feldmann. The latter earned his place on the team by dint of his silver medal in Taupo. The former, meanwhile, won the selection race in Adelaide to put himself on the plane to Germany.
They will be racing at the European Junior Cup in Holten in the coming weeks to gain some invaluable race practice against their European rivals.
Blackbourn is the youngest of the trio but, such is his running ability, that is unlikely to hold him back in Hamburg. While he might lose time in the swim and bike, he can make up for it with his flight of feet.
Feldmann is also an interesting prospect. He finished 17th at the Oceania Championships in Port Douglas (9th U23 man) and had very good swim and bike splits. His run ultimately tailed off but that is to be expected of a Junior over the Olympic distance. As much as Course held on with a sub-30 minute 10km, that is by no means the standard for most elite Juniors.
When only considering the 5km, though, Feldmann should be able to stay fairly close to the front of the race. In any other year, he would probably be the star of the Australian team and he has all the faculties to put himself in the medal hunt.
Note, Australia will actually have four men start in Hamburg as their reserve, Jack Crome, was selected from the wait list to race as one of World Triathlon’s invites. The full article about the invited athletes will be available shortly.
The two remaining Oceania slots were taken by New Zealand.
Benjamin Airey claimed the first of the two places following his 5th place at the Oceania Junior Championships in Taupo. Meanwhile, Finnley Oliver earned the second slot after finishing 6th at the same race.
Since his Taupo showing, Airey finished 29th at the Oceania Cup in Devonport (which doubled as the Oceania Sprint Championships). He also finished 27th at the Oceania Cup in Wanaka back in February.
Airey is generally a strong swimmer and he did not look out of place in the water against the Senior fields. Similarly, his cycling held up well. However, his run is definitely an aspect of his skillset that he will need to work on. Fortunately, time is on his side as he was only born in 2005. Given another year, he could be a contender at next year’s championships.
When it comes to looking to the future, it is a similar story for Oliver.
To date, Taupo remains his only individual international start. His swim and bike were not quite at the same level as Airey, although Oliver is equipped with decent speed on the run. A year younger than his compatriot, Oliver has plenty of time to continue to develop at the Junior level.
Both Airey and Oliver will be making their first overseas starts at the European Junior Cup in Wels which should provide some much-needed experience against large, international fields. Once they have Hamburg under their belts, it will be reasonable to expect more of them in 2024.
Asia
Tak Long Yip will be Hong Kong’s only male athlete in Hamburg.
Thus far he has enjoyed a solid 2023, competing at four Asia Cup races and finishing inside the top-30 at each. He did not manage to break into the top-20 at any of his races, however that is quite a high bar to hold against a Junior. What he did manage to do was accrue important racing experience against seasoned professionals.
Yip is a solid swimmer but his running is definitely his strong suit. At his last race, the Asia Cup in Osaka in which he finished 21st, he recorded one of the fastest runs of the day over 5km.
To put himself into the top-10 (or better) in Hamburg, he will need his run to be on top form and to limit the time he loses in the first two disciplines. It will be a tough ask, but it is something he is capable of achieving.
The likeliest candidate for a medal from Asia, though, may come from one of Japan’s two representatives.
Amu Omuro is the reigning Asian Junior champion and has already logged finishes of 4th at the Asia Cup in Hong Kong and 14th at the Asia Cup in Osaka this year.
Omuro combines a high quality run with plenty of speed in the water, a lethal combination at any level. Having raced at the past two World Junior Championships (finishing 39th in 2021 and 29th in 2022), he has also gained useful experience of championship racing.
At times in Asia Cup races, he has looked a little exposed on the bike. However, he has also looked comfortable on the bike in other races so it may be a tale of inconsistency as opposed to vulnerability. If he can piece together the race he has within him, Omuro could leave Hamburg with a medal around his neck.
The second man on the Japanese team will be Takuto Oshima. Of late, Oshima has found himself one step behind Omuro. In Hong Kong, he earned 5th place while he was the runner-up at last year’s Asian Junior Championships. In both instances, Omuro finished one place ahead of him.
That should not take away from what a highly rated prospect Oshima is.
He also finished 16th at the 2022 World Junior Championships and is as good in the three main disciplines as Omuro. The primary gap between the pair appears to be technical. Namely, Oshima often cedes a bit of time in transition.
If he can tighten up his T1 and T2 in Hamburg, Oshima should be right on Omuro’s shoulder throughout the race. After beating his compatriot at the 2022 iteration of the event, he might do so again this year.
When discussing the Asian representatives, it is hard not to wonder what could have been. Kazakhstan earned three slots for Hamburg after an imperious showing at last year’s Asian Junior Championships. However, they have not entered any athletes. The rationale behind the non-entries remains unclear but it seems like a missed opportunity for a country that has been making big strides in the sport.
Similarly, Chinese Taipei and South Korea neglected to take up their one slot apiece.
As a result, over half of the Asian slots won have gone to waste and the event will lose a little of its cosmopolitan touch.
