He has endured a turbulent season, but the best may be yet to come as Brazil’s Miguel Hidalgo hits Sunday’s World Triathlon Championship Series Karlovy Vary knowing that a win would propel him to within 268 points of Portugal's Series leader Vasco Vilaça heading to the Grand Final.
The Czech hills represent the last of eight stops in this year’s race to become World Champion before the decisive race in Pontevedra on 27 September, with four scores plus those earned in the final deciding who is the 2026 world champion.
And with no Vilaça nor the second-placed defending champion Matt Hauser (AUS) on the start list, it is now or never for the remaining hunters to apply some extra heat to the ever-explosive pressure pot that is Grand Final racing.
A tough Olympic-distance course, Karlovy Vary begins with two technical swim laps of 750m in Rolava Lake before moving onto the bikes and a fast point-to-point of 6.5km to the town centre. From there, 7 laps each packing a leg-busting climb for a total of 40km on two wheels, then it is 4 laps of 2.5km of running, the halfway mark of each is up a grinding incline. Watch it all play out on TriathlonLive.io from 3pm on Sunday 13 September.
HIDALGO'S BIG SHOW?
If last year’s first WTCS win and overall Series silver was a realisation of the pure talent of Miguel Hidalgo, this year has been somewhat stop-start by comparison. Pulling up in Samarkand and Hamburg, 11th in London, it is the silvers in two Olympic-distance races of Yokohama and Alghero where he has looked his best.
Likewise, apart from last year’s massive debut win in Sardinia, it was on the Olympic distance beast of a Karlovy Vary course that he registered his second-best result. First or second would see him leapfrog Matt Hauser into second, but closing in on the leader Vilaça heading into the most unpredictable of races in Pontevedra would be a fine position to find himself.
It was off the third of those big hill pulls that powerhouses Mark Devay (HUN) and Henry Graf (GER) made a break that stuck last year, eventually joined by Tjebbe Kaindl (AUT) to create a 40-second lead out of T2. And that was enough – just – for Graf to hold off the marauding Hidalgo by 8 seconds and secure a debut WTCS win of his own. Another win for the young German talent would see him fly up the rankings, an Achilles issue meaning he has just three scores so far and could be within just over 400 points of Vilaça into the Finals should he hit the top spot.
CAN YEE GET BACK ON THE ATTACK?
Olympic Champion Alex Yee will hope to deliver a late-season surge after a rollercoaster year on and off the blue carpet that has seen him with just two finishes – 5th in Yokohama and 14th in London – but also plenty of fire to draw upon, as he leads a British trio with former U23 World Champion Connor Bentley and Jack Willis.
Ricardo Batista has been the revelation of 2026 thanks to back-to-back podiums in Alghero and Quiberon and a debut win should not be discounted if the Portuguese no.2 can put together a front-pack swim or be close enough off the bike to deploy his formidable run speed.
Hungary’s Csongor Lehmann is no stranger to the Karlovy Vary podium and arrives off the back of a brilliant podium in London, but it is David Cantero who may be the man to watch after the Spaniard’s lightning 10km in Weihai was undone only by a slip in the wet that left him with silver.
FRENCH LEGENDS REUNITE
A French team boasts WTCS Quiberon winner Dorian Coninx and a returning Leo Bergere, whose 2026 has been plagued by injury and for whom things are finally looking back on course as the 2022 World Champion returnd to the pointy end of short course action.
And there is more WTCS and World Cup podium experience and rapid 10km bests ready to be put to work further down the start list, as John Reed (USA), Tim Hellwig (GER), Alessio Crociani (ITA) and Vetle Bergsvik Thorn (NOR) spy a big race to take into the big one in Pontevedra in two weeks’ time.