The World Triathlon Championship
Series rolls into Yokohama on Saturday for the second of eight stops on this
year’s tour (including the Paris Test Event), that will ultimately decide our 2023
World Champions in Pontevedra at the end of September.
First up was March’s sprint-distance
opener Abu Dhabi, now it’s back-to-back Olympic distance action, with 1,000
points on the line in Japan and then again in Cagliari, Italy, in two weeks’
time.
With defending champion Flora Duffy
still absent with injury, WTCS Yokohama will be wide open as the athletes take
the chance to find some quick-fire race consistency for the first time this
year. As always, you can watch full coverage from 10am on Saturday 13 May on
TriathlonLIve.tv.
Coldwell wears the one
Great Britain’s Sophie Coldwell
surprised herself with silver in Abu Dhabi back in March, a last-minute
decision to race on the way back from a training block in Australia proving the
right one as she recovered from a false-start penalty to take second behind
Beth Potter.
Potter won’t be on the start line in
Yokohama, preferring to focus instead on her Cagliari preparations, so Coldwell
will wear the number one. Teammate and overall 2023 Series runner-up Georgia
Taylor-Brown finds herself in an unfamiliar position lower down the start list
after a 15th-place finish in Abu Dhabi that was disappointing by her own
extremely high standards. The champion here last year, a similar display would
be just the tonic the 29-year-old will be looking for to kickstart her title
challenge.
Knibb tests new toe
Taylor Knibb and Taylor Spivey lead
the line for the USA, Knibb with one win from two appearances here, Spivey’s
best a bronze out of her five Yokohama showings to date. For Spivey, 2022 was
all about rediscovering her love for the sport after a tricky previous 12
months and the disappointment of missing out on a first Olympics in Tokyo. That
x-factor was back for all to see in Abu Dhabi as she finished third, so could
that elusive first WTCS gold be on the horizon?
For Knibb, a stress fracture that
wouldn’t heal at the tail end of last year eventually led to surgery at the
start of 2023, and a screw inserted into her fifth metatarsal. While that will
mean she hits Japan a little race rusty, it also means that she will be
hungrier than ever to unleash that signature bike power that could blow the
field apart just as it did in 2021.
Lombardi’s big 12 months
France’s Emma Lombardi had an
outstanding 2022, beginning with fourth place on her WTCS debut on this very
course thanks to a run time just a few seconds off Flora Duffy’s. With no
obvious weakness across the three disciplines, the build up to a home Olympic
Games next year in Paris is a fascinating prospect for the talented former U23
World Champion.
Yuko Takahashi finished agonisingly
close to a first home Series podium back in 2019 after biking her way into
contention, and though that 4th place remains her best finish on the circuit to
date, the 2022 Asian Champion arrives in form and ready to rise to the occasion
once more.
Add in the German threat from the
likes of Lisa Tertsch and Laura Lindemann, the attacking instincts of
Netherlands’ Maya Kingma, Italian Bianca Seregni’s pace-setting swim and the
flowing confidence of Australia’s recently crowned Arena Games Triathlon World
Champion Sophie Linn, and this looks set to be a Yokohama classic in the
making.
Full start lists available here https://triathlon.org/events/start_list/2023_world_triathlon_championship_series_yokohama/576165?mc_cid=b60e3bc4a1&mc_eid=6139649918
WTCS Yokohama
13 May, 10am local time
TriathlonLive.tv
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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