World Triathlon

The blue carpet is rolled in Montreal for this weekend’s action on the Groupe Copley World Triathlon Championship Series, and a solid start list that includes Olympic champions like Kristian Blummenfelt or Jonathan Brownlee, world champions and lots of young talent, all vying for some valuable points on the WTCS and Olympic rankings.

Get ready for another day of action this Saturday! The Elite women will be the first ones to toe the start line, on Saturday, June 24, at 13.30pm local time, for a 750m swim in the calm water of the Old Port, to then jump on their bikes for a 20km bike ride in six laps of 3.6 km each, to round-up the day with a 5km run along the same route as the bike course from the Grand Quai to de la Commune and McGill Streets, and back to the Grand Quai, where the finish line is waiting for the athletes.

Wearing number 1 in Montreal will be one of the most consistent athletes so far this season: Vasco Vilaca. The young Portuguese has a great opportunity this weekend to not only get back the World Triathlon Championship Rankings leadership that he hold for a few weeks before WTCS Cagliari, but also to step for the first time on top of a Series podium. His second place in Abu Dhabi and third in Cagliari have put him on a great position to fight for the overall Championship this year, and he has a proven record of great performances on Sprint distance races, so worth keeping an eye on him this Saturday.

But even though neither Alex Yee (GBR), Hayden Wilde (NZL), Leo Bergere (FRA) or Dorian Coninx (FRA) will be racing this weekend -they all have chosen to skip this event to prepare for the upcoming Sprint & Relay World Championships in Hamburg and the Paris Test Event-, the field in Montreal is filled with talent, and some of the fastest athletes will be ready to seize the opportunity to grab some valuable points both for the Series rankings and also for the Olympic qualification rankings.

Among them, Australia’s Matthew Hauser has shown great form already this season, and if the race comes down to a running one, he will be hard to beat. But if that is the case, you can not discharge some athletes like Jelle Geens (BEL), Jonathan Brownlee (GBR), Manoel Messias (BRA) or Jawad Abdelmoula (MAR), all of them already have a WTCS podium -or multiple ones- under their belts, or one of the running sensations of the season, Spain’s David Castro Fajardo. The young Spaniard, nicknamed “el toro”, the bull in Spanish- outrun Brownlee on a sprint finish to claim the European title less than a month ago, and only a few days ago managed to beat in the last meters of the run Tyler Mislawchuk to claim the victory at the Huatulco World Cup.

Montreal will see a great display of good swimmers, with Kenji Nener (JPN), Hauser, Marten van Riel (BEL) or Jamie Riddle (RSA) likely to take the lead in the first meters of the race, but if they don’t manage to open a gap on the water -and this is not easy, considering that is a 750m swim and a long run to transition- it is likely to have a big pack of athletes managing the 20km bike on a large group.

The likes of Brownlee, Kristian Blummenfelt (NOR), Gustav Iden (NOR) or Jonas Schomburg will try indeed to break that pack, but if it all comes down to the final run, it will be worth to keep an eye not only on the fastest athletes on paper, but also on the local hero, Tyler Mislawchuk, that will count surely on the support of the crowds and is looking forward to his second ever WTCS podium, exactly in the same venue where he got his first and only one a few years ago.

You can check the start list for the Elite Men’s race here, and remember you can watch the race LIVE and on demand on TriathlonLIVE.tv.