Heading fast into the pointy end of
the 2022 season, all eyes are on the Italian island of Sardinia on Saturday as
Cagliari makes its eagerly awaited debut on the World Triathlon Championship
Series circuit.
Already a multiple-time World Cup
venue, the city now welcomes stage five of this year’s Series, the seventh race
of the season, throwing an almighty Olympic-distance challenge at one of the
strongest women’s line ups we have seen all year as the battle to become 2022
World Champion nears its big finale in Abu Dhabi next month.
The course inverts and doubles the
length of the 2019 World Cup course, itself a change to the previous years’
route, replacing the city hills with long, flat straights and a couple of
technical sections in the middle of each of the bike’s ten laps of 3.8km. It is
also a rare beach swim start and the 10km run follows three quarters of the
bike. This could be fast.
WATCH all the action on Saturday 8
October from 10.30am.
GTB Leads the line
Wearing the number one will be
Britain’s Georgia Taylor-Brown, fresh from her Super League success in Toulouse
and eager to extend her lead at the top of the Maurice Lacroix Rankings in
Flora Duffy’s absence.
A whirlwind six years since she last
raced here, an ability to dig in and deliver over any challenge that comes her
way has seen the 28-year-old put together a remarkable run of results including
wins this season in Yokohama and Montreal, the latter arguably one of her
toughest to date. Victory this weekend would see Taylor-Brown take a near-1500
point lead into the final two races and put all the pressure on Duffy heading
into Bermuda needing back-to-back wins to snatch the world title.
Knibb back to shake things upThe
Olympic champion may be missing on Saturday to focus on building to St George
and Bermuda, but the ever-exciting 2021 Series runner-up Taylor Knibb returns
to the blue carpet for the first time since WTCS Yokohama, ready to put her
injury woes behind her and build on some major 70.3 successes of her own this
year, notably gold at Oceanside in April. Expect Knibb to push the bike pace
hard down the long seafront straights and look to dictate the race from the
front given half a chance.
Two other regulars on the WTCS
podiums this season alongside the current number one have been Beth Potter and
Cassandre Beaugrand. The Brit has enjoyed the best 12 months of her career so
far, starting with back-to-back World Cup wins in Korea at the end of 2021,
Arena Games gold in Munich and following her first WTCS podiums in Montreal and
Hamburg with Commonwealth Games bronze in Birmingham.
Like Potter, Beaugrand hits Cagliari
high on confidence having also found the consistency to go with the big
results. After being pipped by Taylor Brown in Montreal and spoiling the party
for the Brit in Leeds, the French star will be eager for another big display
this weekend, and also like Potter, it is a run course she will relish.
Deep podium potential
The top 20 is thick with medal
contenders and competition will be fierce over the entirety of the Olympic-distance
course. Excellent across all three segments, Taylor Spivey has been back to her
best of late and, though she still hunts that first Series gold, the American
has good memories from Sardinia having taken the silver here back in 2018.
Germany’s Lisa Tertsch hit her first
Series podium in Hamburg a few months ago and will relish another fast run in
the sun. Sophie Coldwell won the sprint distance World Cup here in 2019 with a
powerful bike break and has scored back-to-back Series podiums in Abu Dhabi and
Leeds this season.
The French squad continues to boast
impressive strength in depth, Leonie Periault underlining her return to full
fitness with gold on a tough Karlovy Vary course last month and the 2021 U23
World Champion Emma Lombardi scoring a career-best 4th at this year’s WTCS
Yokohama.
Maya Kingma and Alberte Kjaer
Pedersen should never be discounted from the potential prize winners as they
continue to develop the weapons to challenge the best in the world, USA’s
Summer Rappaport was also back in podium form in Karlovy Vary and Djenyfer
Arnold has shown she could be Brazil’s next star in the ascension.
Women’s WTCS Cagliari https://www.triathlonlive.tv/featured/videos/2022-wtcs-cagliari-women?mc_cid=f99e767a5f&mc_eid=6139649918
Saturday 8 October
10.30am CEST
Full start list HERE. https://triathlon.org/events/start_lists/2022_world_triathlon_championship_series_cagliari?mc_cid=f99e767a5f&mc_eid=6139649918
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.
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