From the agony of a bike crash in Yokohama to heroics in Alghero, defending world champion Cassandre Beaugrand heads into a historic home WTCS race this weekend with her eyes firmly on overturning the 435-point deficit to Series leader Beth Potter.

The first ever WTCS French Riviera will be the perfect opportunity to get that title defence right back on track and having spent her formative years in Antibes, just 50km up the coast from Frejus, this is a region the Olympic Champion knows like the back of her hand.

Watch the women in action on Sunday 31 August from 16.30 CEST on TriathlonLive.tv.

With just two point-scoring races completed so far this campaign (WTCS Alghero gold and WTCS Hamburg silver), a win on Sunday would see Cassandre Beaugrand move up to 2925 points, just shy of the maximum 3000. For Beth Potter, the woman who beat her to the title in 2023, gold would see her move up to 2780, but a second silver for Beaugrand would still mean she topped the rankings on 2850 points. 

Then there is the WTCS Hamburg winner Leonie Periault, standing tall in second place thanks to 1000 points for the Hamburg gold and those earned from 5th and 4th place finishes in Alghero and Abu Dhabi respectively. Periault was untouchable on the run in Germany, and she will be feeling every bit as at home as Beaugrand this weekend.  

Just 40 points back in third, Germany's Lisa Tertsch never quite found the rhythm in Hamburg as she had in the season opening WTCS Abu Dhabi win (worth 750 points as a sprint-distance before the new rule kicked in awarding 1000 points to all wins). Add in 3rd in Yokohama and 6th in Alghero, and Tertsch is well placed to challenge for the title if she can upgrade on those places on Sunday.

Nobody will be underestimating Luxembourg’s Jeanne Lehair either. Winner in Yokohama and heading to a home race off the back of some short and sharp supertri success in Chicago, just 30 points separate her and Tertsch. Upgrading both of her two 7th-places so far in Alghero and Hamburg will be needed is she is to realise her title ambitions.

All of which points to the machinations of a unique post-Olympic season. Unusually, out of the seven regular Series races in 2025, the results of just three will count in the final reckoning, along with the points accrued in the Championship Finals Wollongong to determine the 2025 World Champion. 

And it looks set to be an unbelievably tight run-in with three races in less than a month that could see more names force their way into contention. From the French Riviera, it is just two weeks until WTCS Karlovy Vary, then a further two weeks to WTCS Weihai. 

Clear the schedules for what is going to be a historic WTCS French Riviera weekend alongside the T100 for the first time, as the athletes set the tone for some astonishing end-of-season entertainment.