The playing is over. The serious stuff has arrived. In less than four weeks, the WTCS will return for its second stop of the season, this time at a constant fixture of the Series: Yokohama. So far this year we have seen indoor racing, a slew of rapid road running performances and even a first ever winter WTCS race. In Yokohama, however, the season will enter a new phase.
Every women’s WTCS gold medallist since May 2023 will be racing and, with 1000 points on the line, this could be the race that sets the tone for the world title hunt. Find out exactly who will be tackling the women’s event below.
Who’s there?
France has entered only two women but it is an enviable line-up. With one hand, they have put forward last year’s winner Leonie Periault, by herself an athlete that could be considered their ace card. With their other hand, France have gone even bigger, selecting Cassandre Beaugrand.
We know Periault is in fine running form after she finished 12th at the European 10km Championships recently. Moreover, she placed 4th at WTCS Abu Dhabi in February. Similarly, we know Cassandre Beaugrand will be good because she’s Cassandre Beaugrand. (Her dominance over two indoor events this season has done nothing to diminish her aura.) It would therefore be a fair presumption that the women’s race will end with La Marseillaise playing over the podium.
Team Germany will have something to say about that. Lisa Tertsch heads a team of six after striking gold in Abu Dhabi as part of a podium sweep. Nina Eim and Laura Lindemann joined Tertsch on the podium at the season opener and are back for more. Notably, Lindemann took silver at the Lievin World Cup while WTCS medallist Annika Koch – also racing in Yokohama – took the bronze. Tanja Neubert and 2023 World U23 champion Selina Klamt then complete a formidable squad.
The 2023 world champion Beth Potter is also in attendance; other than Tertsch, she is the only woman to have beaten Beaugrand in a standard distance triathlon since May 2023. Yokohama is one of the few venues Potter has yet to medal at and she will look to add gold this time out. Although she has already lost to Beaurgand and Periault on separate occasions this year, neither case was in a standard distance triathlon and another medal at minimum will be in her sights. Kate Waugh, the winner of T100 Singapore, and Sian Rainsley will also be racing for Great Britain.
It has been almost a decade since Gwen Jorgensen last won in Yokohama and she will be back at a former favourite hunting ground of hers as part of a five-woman American team. Joining her will be Taylor Spivey, Summer Rappaport, Erica Ackerlund and Gina Sereno. Mexico’s Rosa Maria Tapia Vidal will likewise be back at the scene of her only WTCS medal after powering to the silver in 2023. Like Jorgensen, she will look to recapture her best form. She will race alongside Mercedes Romero Orozco.
Bianca Seregni and Alice Betto form a strong Italian double-punch while Miriam Casillas Garcia and Anna Godoy Contreras will be starting for Spain. A large home Japanese team will also be on the start line with eight athletes currently slated to race. Heading up this contingent will be Yuko Takahashi, who is fresh off a medal at the Asia Sprint Championships.
Several athletes will be lone starters for their countries but cannot be discounted as dark horses for the podium. World Cup medallists Jeanne Lehair (LUX), Tilda Månsson (SWE) and Roksana Slupek (POL) are among this group, as is World U23 Championships medallist Maria Tomé (POR).
Who’s not there?
Emma Lombardi, a medallist last year in Yokohama, is missing from the start lists while Olympic silver medallist Julie Derron continues her absence from the WTCS as she prioritises the T100. The winners of WTCS Yokohama from 2023 and 2022, Sophie Coldwell and Georgia Taylor-Brown, are also not racing. As a reminder, Coldwell is taking maternity leave from the sport.
At time of writing Taylor-Brown is the only woman in the world top-10 not racing. Rachel Klamer and the now-retired Vicky Holland are the only other women missing from the top-20 in the world rankings.
Four talking points
Score to settle
She is the best triathlete in the world right now. She is unbeaten this year after indoor victories at the Lievin World Cup and Supertri E World Championships. She broke the French record over the 5km. She is the overwhelming favourite. And yet, Cassandre Beaugrand has never really performed in Yokohama.
An 8th place from her first appearance in 2018 remains her best result. Finishes of DNF (2019), 10th (2021) and DNF (2022) have followed. For an athlete of Beaugrand’s calibre, this run of Yokohama results does not match up to the rest of her palmarès and represents a minor blemish on her record.
Beaugrand’s Yokohama outing, then, is a little like going back and chasing perfect scores on all the levels of a game after already completing it. After all, whether Candy Crush, Angry Birds or the WTCS, it is always nice to have a perfect line of gold medals.
California dreamin’
It was the second of many. Gwen Jorgensen’s second ever WTCS win came in Yokohama in 2013, which in turn followed less than a month after her maiden win in San Diego. When she heads onto the blue carpet this time, California may be on her mind again in light of the recent announcement of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games course.
The American women’s team is in a slightly weird place right now. Many of its recent stars are over 30 and mulling their long-term triathlon futures (this group includes Jorgensen, Summer Rappaport, Taylor Spivey and Kirsten Kasper). Meanwhile, Katie Zaferes has already retired. Gina Sereno and Erica Ackerlund would have good odds of making it to Los Angeles, but unlike their predecessors have yet to make a WTCS podium.
And so the circle comes back to Jorgensen. She holds the fastest ever run split at the event (32:15 from 2015) and logged another good split there last year, albeit from the chase pack. This year, she will hope to properly launch her 2028 Olympic quest. In 2013, California set the stage for her success in Yokohama. Twelve years later she will look to make the reverse happen.
Breaking free
Tertsch and Jorgensen showed the pitfalls of missing the lead pack last year in Yokohama. Both were the fastest runners on the day but missed the top-10 at the finish after losing too much ground on the bike. Looking at this year’s field, there is plenty of swimming firepower with multiple athletes capable of blowing the race open. Foremost among this group is Bianca Seregni.
She obliterated the field at the season opener in Abu Dhabi. Indeed, she almost went too fast as she could not build a group around her. Jolien Vermeylen remained close enough and will be starting in Yokohama. So too will Therese Feuersinger and Djenyfer Arnold, who is fresh off her win at Ironman 70.3 Brazil. Beaugrand is another fast swimmer while Tapia and Spivey made the breakaway in Yokohama in 2023.
The scope is there for a group to get away. But with the considerable bike power in the field, particularly from the German team, will they stay away?
Handing over the mantle
Yuko Takahashi has been the best Japanese triathlete for several years. With over 200 elite starts under her belt, including 22 wins and 42 podiums, she has delivered time and time again for her country. In Yokohama, though, we may see the first signs of transition at the head of the Japanese team.
Manani Hayashi will be making her WTCS debut and is one of Asia’s brightest prospects in the sport. Born in 2004, she will be the youngest athlete in the field alongside Tilda Månsson but has already made a splash on the continental scene, winning four Asia Cup races in 2024. She was also the 2023 Asia Junior champion.
Hayashi earned silver behind Takahashi at the Japan Championships last autumn and in 2023. More recently, she finished 4th and a place behind her teammate at the Asia Sprint Championships. The change at the top of Japanese triathlon might not happen yet, but Hayashi is certainly coming. And Yokohama may just be where the shift fully begins.
Follow all the latest in the build-up to WTCS Yokohama across all World Triathlon channels and catch the racing live on TriathlonLive on 17th May. View the full women’s start list here.
