Across two days of racing, the temptation was to look for the subtle clues into an athlete’s condition. Who looked good? Who did not? Such was the shadow-boxing throughout the competition, the answers were not fully apparent. In the last round of the men’s final, Hayden Wilde reached for the megaphone on the streets of Hamburg and left no question whatsoever about his capabilities.
Thirty men lined up to contest the first of the three rounds. Racing over the same Super Sprint course as the qualifiers and repechage, the last ten finishers would be knocked out.
In an early show of strength, Matthew Hauser jumped into the lead. The winner of WTCS Montreal clocked 3:38 for the 300m and gained a 3 second gap over his nearest rivals, Tayler Reid and Miguel Hidalgo. Among his rivals for the gold, Vasco Vilaca lurked 5 seconds back however Kristian Blummenfelt emerged 18 seconds down. The situation was even darker for Hayden Wilde as he lost 20 seconds to Hauser. Alex Yee also conceded 23 seconds to the Australian.
Out of T1, Vilaca bounced straight onto Hauser’s wheel. With Tom Richard also in the mix, a front pack of five peeled away.
The final pack on the road contained Blummenfelt, Yee and Wilde; each man knew he could afford to use the run to rise through the field, although it was a risky strategy.
Reid moved to the front of the lead group to try to maintain the pace. A combination of Vetle Bergsvik Thorn and Tim Hellwig proved too powerful, though, as they brought the chase pack of nine up to the lead five. At that point, Blummenfelt, Yee and Wilde sat 14 seconds down on the lead group of fourteen.
Jelle Geens, Lasse Nygaard Priester and Manoel Messias flitted in the rear pack, waiting for their moment on the run. Wilde seemed to shoulder the burden of catching the leaders and, after receiving little help, he promptly broke away. Blummenfelt brought the pack back to Wilde’s wheel but the ease with which Wilde had moved clear would have alarmed several of his rivals.
Meanwhile, Simon Henseleit and Hellwig took over from Vilaca and established a German train at the front of the race. Once the pack pulled into T2, the gap over the Wilde-Yee-Blummenfelt group was 10 seconds.
Henseleit and Lasse Lührs struck out first onto the run. Having fallen in his qualifier amidst a crowded group, Lührs had made it to the final through the repechage. In the final, he made no such mistake with his positioning.
The German pair led for almost the entire run as Yee, Wilde and Blummenfelt made their way into the top-20. Towards the end, Hauser returned to the front and looked collected. In a moment of confusion, though, Thorn was disqualified for failing to serve a penalty. As a result, Roberto Sanchez Mantecon made it into the final having finished 21st.
The unlucky ten to be knocked out, then, were Henri Schoeman, Jawad Abdelmoula, Bence Bicsák, Lasse Nygaard Priester, Matthew McElroy, Janus Staufenberg, Geens and Jacob Birtwhistle.
An hour later, the men were back for the second round.
In a replay of their qualifier, Hauser and Csongor Lehmann took up the first two positions out of the water. Once again, Reid was close to the front and, once again, Blummenfelt, Yee and Wilde leaked time.
Blummenfelt was the fourteenth man out of the water, 12 seconds down on Hauser. Yee and Wilde were the next men out having lost 13 seconds. All three soon made their way to the front pack as a sixteen man lead group formed.
After an early scare, Max Studer and Valentin Wernz were able to make it up to the pack, taking its number to eighteen, as the group settled into a slightly more relaxed tempo over the 7.5km.
With little drama on the bike, the second round came down to the run. Mimicking his approach from the first round, Lührs led out of T2. Wilde soon came through to assume the lead. After a subdued yet efficient performance in the qualifier and a quiet first round, Wilde gave one of the first, and briefest, flashes of his running speed. No sooner had he done so, he shut the pace down and let the group envelop him.
Seven men coalesced around Wilde. Blummenfelt, Yee, Hauser, Vilaca, Lehmann, Studer and Tyler Mislawchuk all meted out a controlled pace at the front while Tim Hellwig hung behind. With the first nine slots determined, Hidalgo trumped Reid in a sprint for the final place in the third round.
The unfortunate ten were therefore made up by Reid, Marten Van Riel, Antonio Serrat Seoane, Henseleit, Lührs, Seth Rider, Richard, Wernz, Messias and Sanchez.
Ten men stood atop the pontoon and bathed in the summer warmth amid the wait for the starter’s signal. With two rounds of racing to shake off, not to mention the exertions from the day prior, any sense of freshness had long since evaporated.
The efforts told as Hauser did not lead out the swim for the first time in the final. Instead, Lehmann and Hellwig jumped into the lead while the Australian followed. In an improved swim, Yee lost only 6 seconds while Wilde yielded 7.
The fog caused by the repeated efforts then surfaced once more as Hidalgo ran past his bike in T1. He quickly recovered but his mistake spoke to scrambled thoughts.
Although Vilaca powered off the front, the field soon came back together. Blummenfelt tried to up the ante however the breakaway tactic remained firmly unsheathed in the fight for gold.
Once again the Norwegian forced the issue in the knowledge that he did not possess the running acceleration to compete over such a short distance. However Vilaca was equal to anything Blummenfelt could throw at him.
Around the final corner Wilde darted up the outside, deploying a similar burst to that of the first round. Down the closing straight into T2 a gap suddenly appeared. It was small but it was something.
A stunning transition followed. Wilde clocked 19 seconds for his change and was the only man to dip under 20 seconds. He exploded onto the run like a firework and suddenly he had a gap of 10 metres.
Hauser, Blummenfelt and Yee gathered themselves but a look of dread already inched across their faces. It seemed almost implausible that Wilde could have gained such a gap so quickly. His tactical astuteness was on full display; crucially, he had the speed to back it up.
With a lap to go in the 1.75km run, Wilde’s lead stood at 6 seconds. The raw number surely looked insurmountable but as Wilde gurned in pain Vilaca moved to the front of the chase.
Somehow, Wilde dug deeper. Every sinew strained and he seemed to visibly fight his body melting from under him as his muscles burned. It took incredible heart, but somehow he forged on.
Hauser and Blummenfelt fell away from Vilaca and Yee as the pair closed the gap on Wilde. Closer and closer they drew as the New Zealander’s legs began to give way under him.
But they were too late.
Wilde collapsed over the line but the pain will have meant nothing. After winning in Hamburg in 2022, he had done so again. More importantly, he had bested Yee for the first time in the WTCS and lifted a monkey from his back.
In a lightning sprint, Vilaca thundered to the silver medal. In the end he finished 2 seconds behind Wilde highlighting how pivotal Wilde’s planned attack had proven.
Yee then claimed the bronze medal.
In his best performance since returning to short distance racing, Blummenfelt earned 4th place ahead of Hauser.
Studer was the next man to finish while Hidalgo, Hellwig, Mislawchuk and Lehmann followed in short order.
As the men lay scattered across the finishing area, utterly spent, one by one they pulled themselves to their feet. One of the last to rise was Wilde. Once he finally did, though, the pain had began to ebb away and in its place a smile began to form.
On the streets of Hamburg, Wilde stood back and puffed out his chest. No words were needed, though. His racing had said it all.
You can view the full men’s results here.
