Cassandre Beaugrand led the charge for Bahrain Victorious 13 as the world’s best triathlon team raked in gold medals and top 10 finishes in Europe this weekend.
The French athlete topped the podium at the World Triathlon Championship Series Hamburg, reigning over the 750-metre swim, 20-kilometre bike, and 5-kilometre run in 55 minutes and 19 seconds as well as producing a new World Triathlon record (15:02) on a sprint-distance run.
After coming out of the water just 10 seconds off the swim leader, Beaugrand navigated the cycle leg in a group driven by Bahrain Victorious 13 teammate, Great Britain’s Kate Waugh to bridge the gap to the front. What eventually became a lead pack of 26 came into the bike-to-run transition together, but Beaugrand quickly found her pace and her place at the front while challengers were left to compete for the remaining two podium spots. Waugh finished in a strong seventh place.
While Beaugrand also broke the tape in Hamburg last year to become World Triathlon Super Sprint Champion, it was over shorter distances across two stages and a final. One year later, she has recorded consecutive wins on standard and sprint distance WTCS races leading into the highlight of her year at home in France.
“It was good for me to race before the Olympics; it works for me to not have a big gap between races,” she said. “I just realised that it was ten years ago when I did my first WTCS here in Hamburg so I thought to make it quite special for the comeback ten years later… I was not sure of how my legs would respond after a block of training in altitude, but I felt good so I decided to go for it. I am very proud of myself right now.”
In the men’s race, French compatriot Vincent Luis came out of the swim in second and drove the pace in front at the pointy end over the cycle leg. In his race to finish sixth he produced not only the tenth-fastest run split during the race, but also in World Triathlon history over the sprint distance.
Max Stapley of Great Britain came in 9th place after racing shoulder-to-shoulder with Luis; only 16 seconds separated them at the finish.
Just over 1,500 kilometres southwest of Hamburg, Kat Matthews struck gold at Ironman Vitoria-Gasteiz, finishing the 3.8-kilometre swim, 180-kilometre bike, and 42-kilometre run in a time of 8 hours, 24 minutes and 23 seconds.
The British athlete produced the second-fastest swim split, rode with the leaders during the cycle leg, then stamped her mark on the race with the day’s fastest marathon. Not only did she break the tape more than eight minutes ahead of the rest of the field, but she also bettered her own personal best by the same margin.
Racing over the half distance at Ironman 70.3 Swansea, British compatriot Joe Skipper swam 1.9 kilometres, cycled 90 kilometres, and ran a half marathon in three hours, 57 minutes, and 17 seconds to finish just off the podium in fourth.
preprocess
