Spain’s Alberto González goes into the weekend’s WTCS Weihai 11th in the 2026 World Triathlon Championship Series rankings, off the back of top ten finishes in all three of his Series starts this season. A podium in China would send him past 2,600 points and into the top five overall, with WTCS Karlovy Vary and a huge home Grand Final in Pontevedra to come.
Weihai already holds a special place in the 28-year-old’s career. The race in 2024 remains his best World Series result to date, a fourth place finish in company that read like a who's who of the sport: Alex Yee, Léo Bergère, Miguel Hidalgo and ahead of Vincent Luis who rounded out that top five.
On the latest episode of the World Triathlon Podcast, González talks through his 2026 season so far, life at altitude in Font-Romeu alongside training partner Vasco Vilaça, and the mental trick he keeps returning to in the biggest moments of his career, one that first surfaced on a World Cup start line in Hong Kong and carried him all the way to an Olympic final in Paris.
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González's fifth place in London last month was another marker of a season on the rise, following ninth in Alghero and eighth in Hamburg. Opportunity knocks now in Weihai, with a start list headed by Vilaça’s huge rival for the title Matt Hauser.
'Weihai will be the Olympic distance, a different way of racing, more tactical,' he said. 'Staying calm, not wasting too much energy, and being ready for the run. It will be interesting to race there. I keep improving every race and I'm really looking forward to being there.”
Gonzalez arrives in China off an altitude block in Font-Romeu with Vilaça, the Series leader, and a training environment under Joel Filiol that he credits with sharpening his season.
'When I say everything is going well, it means I'm healthy, I can train, I sleep well, good mood, enjoying the practice,' he said. 'I think now, at 28, I'm getting the experience to know where to be and who to be with. I'm enjoying the moment, and that's what you can see now in my results.'
Ask González about the biggest moments of his career and a theme keeps returning: an internal voice, deployed in the closing minutes of a race, that has twice taken him somewhere he wasn't sure he could reach.
The first came with Olympic qualification on the line at the 2024 Hong Kong World Cup, and a burst of acceleration that helped make his nickname, Speedy Gonzalez, feel entirely earned. It followed a difficult start to the year, when he wasn't selected for the WTCS Abu Dhabi and instead had to force his way back into contention through the World Cup circuit.
'When you live through moments like that, you realise you're not in the defeated role, like a loser thinking ‘they're not going to select me,' he said. 'I told myself, ‘no, I'm going to New Zealand, I'm going to do the podium, I'm going to do all I can’. And when I was 600 metres from the line in Hong Kong, I said to myself: 'Alberto, this is for the Olympics.' I didn't know what was coming, but the moment was now, and that's why I kicked as hard as I could. I didn't look back. I was fighting until the end.'
That result helped confirm a Paris 2024 spot, and the same voice returned in the Olympic final itself. Sitting 13th with a lap to go, González talked himself into a huge final push on the run.
'Until the last lap I was in 13th place, I think,' he said. 'I said to myself: Just suffer five minutes, six, five minutes, and you'll be grateful forever.' That changed my mindset, and I started passing rivals. Then I checked the list and saw Matt Hauser in seventh. I couldn't believe this guy was in front of me. I finished eighth. It was something magical.'
Of course, if it was that straightforward, everyone would be doing it. 'Sometimes you can't summon it like that and there's a voice that tells you it's a difficult race. That's the fight, to tell yourself not to listen to that one, to listen to the good ones, and to say: 'You have the capacity.' That's what I'm trying to improve now, to have the performance I found in the World Cup and bring it into the Series.'
Hear the full conversation with Alberto González wherever you listen to your podcasts.