With the first WTCS race of the season a little over a month away, here are 5 thoughts as racing returns.

Team Norway is back

Lets get the first and obvious thought that comes to mind out of the way early. Gustav Iden and Kristian Blummenfelt will be back focusing on short course racing in 2023, as they build towards Paris 2024. This adds further depth to an already strong men’s field and more firepower to the chasers coming out of the water with a gap to make up.

Based on their track record Blummenfelt will be the bigger threat and that showed in the two WTCS races the pair competed in at the end of the 2022 season. Two top 10 finishes for Blummenfelt, while Iden fell to 19th in Abu Dhabi but did secure 9th in Bermuda. The surprise in both of these races is that the chasers were unable to close the gap to the breakaway, where the eventual winner ended up coming from. If either of the Norwegians stand a chance of challenging for podiums this year they will need to get the chasers working better than they did in Bermuda and Abu Dhabi.

Both Blummenfelt and Iden have stated their intent to still race middle distance, wanting to retain their respective #1 and #2 PTO rankings. This could lead to a manic season moving across the distances, especially when the new PTO Asian Open falls only a couple days after the Olympic test event. We’ll have to wait and see how much travelling they can fit in to hit all of these races.

Is Lombardi ready to challenge at the top?

After winning the U23 Women’s world title in 2021, Lombardi continued to perform when stepping up to WTCS. In her WTCS debut in Yokohama she was edged off the podium by Flora Duffy, after she kept pace with Georgia Taylor-Brown and Leonie Periault through 7k of the run. An impressive debut where she demonstrated her ability across all three disciplines; swimming with the front, sticking in the breakaway and running with the best for 3 of the 4 laps.

She was only able to follow this up with 44th in Hamburg where she was off the pace from the start. However she emulated her Yokohama performance in Cagliari, swimming and riding with the front and outrunning the returning Taylor Knibb for 2nd. She closed the season out with 8th in Abu Dhabi. This was another race where she missed the front swim pack and was on the back foot coming out of T1. However she able to run through the field and posted the 4th fastest time of the day at 34:02.

Moving into her second WTCS season, I can already see her finishing in the top 5 of the WTCS rankings. She has shown her ability across all three disciplines, something that is needed to challenge Duffy and Taylor-Brown. Improved consistency of making the front pack in the swim and a more complete WTCS schedule will see her move up the rankings.

Can Wilde swim with the front?

Hayden Wilde backed up his bronze medal performance from the Tokyo Olympics with a superb year where he won the Super League Championship series and narrowly lost out to Léo Bergere in the race for the WTCS title.

He was dominant on the bike and run featuring in the top 5 for each when applying the WTCS points system to the individual disciplines. His weakness has always been the swim and we saw in Yokohama how hard he had to work to close the gap out of the water. However throughout the 2022 WTCS season he consistently improved his swim.

Across sprint and Olympic distance races he closed the gap to the leader and to the athletes who made the front bike pack. In the first race of the 2022 season Wilde was 34 seconds back from the athletes who made the front bike pack. By the end of the season he had reduced this gap to only 6 seconds and only narrowly missed the front bike pack which would have had a huge impact on the world title standings.

Wilde has shown his ability to improve throughout the season and he discussed his offseason swim focus in an interview with TriStats, which you can read here. In this interview Wilde discussed the importance of improving his top end speed. Improving this could be the difference between making the front pack and not. Taking a look at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi, Wilde swam consistently over the two laps of the swim, with times of 9:07 and 9:09. However on the first lap he lost 16 seconds to the front, compared to 7 seconds on the second lap. If Wilde can improve his get out speed he will be able to limit the damage early in the swim and find faster feet in the water. If he starts consistently making front swim packs then we could see him taking the world title in 2023.

No aero bars, no problem?

It was announced in December 2021 that clip on aero bars would be banned for the 2023 season and onwards. It will be interesting to see if this there is any noticeable impact on racing because of this change. It has become common to see athletes at the head of packs on the aero bars and even athletes on the second and third wheel tucked in the aero position. This clearly means athletes have less control of the bike and are in a worse position to brake or avoid any hazards which could lead to crashes on course.

On the women’s side two of the best cyclists in the sport, Flora Duffy and Taylor Knibb, both used clip on aero bars in 2022 and saw them put in significant time to the field while riding them. In the past we have seen them both ride off the front solo while using aero bars. With the bars removed it will make it harder to achieve the same aerodynamic outcome. In terms of racing this could result in less solo or small breakaways. The advantage will be to the larger groups who can change the rider at the front of the pack more frequently.

As the ban only relates to clip on aero bars, there have been reports that new handlebars could be produced with built in aero bars to get around this new rule. If this is the case will World Triathlon shut this down straight away?

Paris Olympic Test Event

With the build up to Paris 2024 already a focus for athletes, the test event in August will be an opportunity to see how the course races and what type of athlete it benefits. If everything goes to plan I will be in Paris to check out the Olympic venue and watch the action.

The test event provides the opportunity for athletes to secure qualification to the games, depending on the requirements set by their federation. If an athlete podiums or comes in the top 8 at the test event, then for most of the top federations, they will get a spot on the Olympic team.

With the shortened Olympic cycle, expect to see the same names featuring near the front of the race. Reigning Olympic and World champion Flora Duffy will be aiming to race at her fifth Olympics and defend her title against Georgia Taylor-Brown, Taylor Knibb and the strong crop of French athletes.

The three men’s medalists from 2021 will all want to stamp their authority on the race venue and spoil the homecoming for the likes of Vincent Luis and Léo Bergere. France look like they have the strongest teams for both the men and women, making them the favourite for the mixed relay.