After an extended absence from the international triathlon scene, China played host to the final Asia Cup race of the year today in Xiamen. Having not hosted a regular triathlon since 2019, mainland China has now hosted seven events in a packed 2023.
With the Olympic distance on offer once again, and Christmas being only a month out, an extended rest may be on the wish-lists for some of the participants. Be that as it may, in Xiamen the athletes ended the year with a bang.
Men’s race
After winning the Hong Kong Asia Cup a week prior, James Edgar thumped the field as he claimed his third international victory of the season.
Mitsuho Mochizuki had jumped into a decent lead after the 1500m swim. Mochizuki clocked 18:19 while his compatriot Kyotaro Yoshikawa emerged next, 16 seconds down. Edgar followed Yoshikawa with Robin Elg and Koki Yamamoto in tow but thereafter a large gap formed to the rest of the field.
Having broken up the race in the water, Mochizuki tried to repeat the trick on the bike. With 40km to take on, though, he could not fend off the chase quartet behind. Despite his best efforts, Mochizuki was caught.
With four long laps of 10km, there were limited opportunities for those further back to see the front five men. Each time they did so, however, can only have been a disheartening experience.
While the chasers had an initial deficit of around 25 seconds to make up to the Edgar-Yoshikawa group after the swim, that soon ballooned to over 3 minutes on the bike. By the time the leaders arrived in T2, the rest of the field had a lot of ground left to cover on the bike.
Such was the advantage, Edgar was (to use a touch of exaggeration) virtually at the end of the first of the four run laps by the time the chasers made it through transition.
What cannot be exaggerated, though, was Edgar’s superiority on foot. Having been pushed hard by Jason Tai Long Ng in Hong Kong, he was too good for his rivals in Xiamen.
Clocking a field-leading 31:09 split, he roared to victory by 2 minutes 13 seconds.
Yoshikawa was the next man home and took the silver medal after a hard day’s effort. In turn, he beat Elg, the bronze medallist by 1 minute 18 seconds.
By the time the identifies of the whole top-8 were known, though, Edgar was long gone.
Women’s race
In many ways, the women’s race was a carbon copy of the men’s.
Yuan Yuan of China led the swim in 20:35 with her compatriot Yifan Yang 3 seconds behind. An initial pack of seven women, consisting entirely of home athletes, formed at the head of the race on the bike.
One athlete to miss the pack was Ivana Kuriackova. The Slovakian, who is currently leading the charge to claim the European New Flag slot for the Paris Olympics, fell on the wrong side of a 10 second gap to the leaders in the water. With the next athlete behind her 50 seconds back after T1, Kuriackova was stranded alone on the bike and fell behind.
Another athlete to miss out on the lead group was Anqi Huang, the Asian Games silver medallist and an Asia Cup race winner from earlier in the season. Huang headed up the pack behind Kuriackova and had plenty of work to do if she was to catch the leaders.
Up ahead, Yang drove the lead pack forwards. They lost two athletes on the bike, creating the same five-athlete group that was seen in the men’s race. Once the pack was down to five, Yang became the elder statesman of the group in a way.
Born in 2000, she was the oldest member of the pack and the only one with WTCS experience. A large degree of the pace-setting duties therefore fell upon her shoulders. At the same time, she was ably assisted by Huiwen Jia.
Between them, Yang and Jia helped to grow their advantage to almost 2 minutes. Once through T2, Yang broke clear and seemed set for a similarly dominant victory as Edgar.
However, Huang and Kuriackova were not beaten yet.
The pair set after Yang and over the course of the first three laps of the run picked off three of the five leaders. Only Jia and Yang lay ahead.
With a final effort, Huang pulled away from Kuriackova and reeled in Jia, moving into 2nd place. Yang, though, was untouchable. She crossed the line 57 seconds ahead of Huang to earn her first ever international win.
Although Huang clocked the fastest run of the day in 36:26, she had to settle for silver. Meanwhile, Jia managed to hold off a charging Kuriackova to nab the bronze medal.
With a women’s podium made up entirely by the home team, Xiamen thus became one of the most successful Chinese performances of 2023.
You can view the full results here.
