We begin the 2022 World Triathlon
Championship Series action already two events into a season that picked right
up from the pandemic-punctured 2021, after WTCS Hamburg and WTCS Abu Dhabi
kicked things off in style in September and November last year. The UAE capital
will also host the 2022 World Triathlon Championship Finals, where the world
champions will be crowned this November. Two races in, seven to go, and WTCS
Yokohama coming in hot this weekend - the best in the world are ready to toe
the line again at last.
Currently at number one in the men’s
Maurice Lacroix Rankings is Antonio Serrat Seoane, the 27-year-old who has been
waiting patiently in the wings to pick up the Spanish torch held so long by
Mario Mola and Javier Gomez. The German pair of Tim Hellwig and Lasse Nygaard
Priester have each already amassed over 1,000 points. France’s two-time World
Champion Vincent Luis stands ominously by in sixth.
The women’s rankings look more
familiar, headed by USA’s Summer Rappaport and Germany’s Laura Lindemann.
Bermuda’s WTCS Abu Dhabi winner Flora Duffy and 2020 champion Georgia
Taylor-Brown (GBR) among the big names well in touch.
Duffy is chasing an unprecedented
fourth world title, a feat that could establish the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Champion
as the greatest the sport has seen. Her fellow double-champion in 2021,
Kristian Blummenfelt, has set himself targets of a longer kind and we will have
to wait and see when and where he will race this year. One thing’s for sure,
with the fresh crop of talent coming through, the Norwegian won’t be able to
resist the call of the blue carpet for long. Head to TriathlonLive.tv for all
of the action live and direct, and on demand.
WTCS Yokohama
14-15 May
First up, Yokohama. It’s one of the
longest-running races on the circuit, an Olympic-distance challenge that is
fast, flat and technical and provides a perfect chance for the athletes to see
exactly where they are after an extended off-season. Previously a favourite of
Luis and Rappaport, Duffy has won there twice, Taylor Knibb was victorious in
2021… WTCS Yokohama will no doubt be as hard to predict as the year-openers
always are. Will the results be as telling as last year’s..?
WTCS Leeds
11-12 June
It was a new-look Leeds circuit
unveiled in 2021, the point-to-point section from Roundhay Park into the city
centre and subsequent tight urban bike and run course switched for an entirely
park-based event with totally new challenges. The bike has draining inclines,
the run is demanding all the way to the tape, but last year’s crowds were as
big and vocal as ever as Alex Yee and Maya Kingma won the day. After his two
silvers here already, could local favourite Jonathan Brownlee finally strike
gold?
WTCS Montreal
25-26 June
The new elimination format was a big
hit in 2021, particularly with the French, as Dorian Coninx, Vincent Luis and
Leo Bergere swept the men’s podium at the end of two hard days of racing four
times over the super sprint distance. Duffy proved her versatility with gold
after Knibb had looked so strong all weekend, fellow American Taylor Spivey
joining them on the podium. This year’s programme includes the Junior and Mixed
Relay World Championships and the World Triathlon Age-Group Sprint
Championships also return to the blue carpet for the first time since 2019.
WTCS Hamburg
9-10 July
Hamburg. Home of triathlon
brilliance, breakthroughs and beer showers. For 20 years, the German city has
been synonymous with the sport, the Binnenalster Lake complete with the
infamous dark, tunnelled segment on the way back to dry land, the crowds always
out in force, the champions unpredictable. It was here that Luis and
Taylor-Brown were crowned World Champions in a one-off 2020 event, last year
the city kicked off this season with Tim Hellwig and Laura Lindemann taking the
golds. Mario Mola has a hat-trick of wins here, Duffy and Taylor-Brown one
apiece. Expect fireworks.
WTCS Cagliari
7-8 October
Already home to several World Cups
across several iterations of course, the town of Cagliari on the Italian island
of Sardinia returns to the World Triathlon circuit in 2022 with its first
top-tier event and a technically challenging but beautiful course. Blummenfelt
won the first ever World Cup race here in 2016, Adrien Briffod, Alistair
Brownlee, Sophie Coldwell and Jolanda Annen have all done likewise. It will be
over the sprint-distance, starting with a potentially choppy sea swim, and
packed with the usual Italian passion and flair. Cagliari will be ready to pull
out all the stops as it makes a spectacular WTCS debut.
WTCS Bermuda
5-6 November
Bermuda is back! After two years out
of the reckoning, the island returns to the calendar ready to deliver another
blockbuster. The tropical paradise went triathlon crazy when hometown hero
Flora Duffy won the first Series event here in 2018, and collectively lost it
when she won the country’s first ever Olympic gold in Tokyo. The party is sure
to continue either side of the triathlon action, where the standard distance
course includes nine testing climbs of Flora Duffy (née Corkscrew) Hill. Norway
swept the men’s podium here in 2018, Katie Zaferes and Dorian Coninx won a year
later. After two years out of the spotlight, Bermuda will be buzzing for its
third outing.
2022 World Triathlon Championship
Finals Abu Dhabi
23-26 November
After six series events in 2022 and
two in 2021, the race to amass enough points to become this year’s World
Triathlon Champions will all boil down to the best part of two hours in steamy
Abu Dhabi. It’s a new-look course that awaits in November, but a similar
challenge in the heat of the desert. Part of the circuit since 2015, this will
be the third Olympic-distance event held here, the last being in 2017 when
Javier Gomez and Andrea Hanson (Hewitt) delivered superb finishes for gold.
More recently, Flora Duffy and Jelle Geens were the two to triumph here, but
with everything on the line and a new-look course to tackle, this year’s finale
will be utterly unmissable.
Can the likes of Hayden Wilde, Jacob
Birtwhistle or Marten Van Riel deliver a first world title? Could this be
Jessica Learmonth‘s year, or will Cassandre Beaugrand find world-beating
consistency? Stay tuned to TriathlonLive.tv for the answers between now and
November.
ABOUT WORLD TRIATHLON
World Triathlon is the international
governing body for the Olympic and Paralympic sport of triathlon and all
related multisport disciplines around the world, including duathlon, aquathlon,
cross triathlon and winter triathlon. Triathlon made its Olympic debut in
Sydney 2000, with a third medal event, the Mixed Team Relay, added to the
programme at Tokyo 2020, while para triathlon was first added to the Paralympic
programme at Rio 2016. World Triathlon is proudly committed to the development
of the sport worldwide, with inclusion, equality, sustainability and
transparency at our core as we seek to help triathletes at all levels of the
sport to be extraordinary.
www.triathlon.org
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