This was a study in the shift from belief to knowledge. On a day in which his title rivals were plagued by misfortune, Vasco Vilaca (POR) produced a textbook performance to claim victory at WTCS Alghero, a mere five weeks after logging his first Series win. His triumph brimmed with a new kind of swagger, and as he takes the outright lead in the overall Series, this golden run looks like it could go on and on and on.
Fresh off a dominant win of his own at WTCS Yokohama, defending world champion Matthew Hauser (AUS) emerged from the swim at the head of a strung-out field alongside Dorian Coninx (FRA) and Alessio Crociani (ITA). After Vilaca, Miguel Hidalgo (BRA) and Henry Graf (GER) then made themselves comfortable at the front in the initial lead pack of ten men, it seemed a breakaway similar to that which dominated Yokohama and indeed last year’s Alghero race was on the cards. However, the technical Alghero course soon changed everything.
First Hauser crashed. He soldiered on to arrive in T2 but did not start the run. Graf likewise hit the ground (twice), the second of his mishaps knocking David Cantero del Campo (ESP), the fastest runner from last year’s race, down too. At the same incident, Alex Yee (GBR) rode over the rear wheel of a prone Hugo Milner (GBR) on a day when the Olympic champion was often in sight of the front but ultimately lost time in an adrift chase pack. Like the other crash victims, Yee would not finish the race.
Throughout it all, Vilaca pieced together an assured ride over the 40km, masterfully navigating the corners that had unseated so many others. Hidalgo had a brief scare during the bike and was forced to recoup valuable seconds. He, too, made it to the run in an ideal position, though.
Vilaca was not the only athlete in the field on a confidence high. Luke Willian (AUS) came into this race on the back of a second ever WTCS medal in Yokohama and evidently fancied his chances of another. He led out of T2 and set the early pace with Hidalgo.
Eventually Vilaca would join the lead pair, and by the end of the first lap he and Hidalgo had dropped Willian. For almost the entirety of the 10km thereafter, Hidalgo set the pace. Locked on the feet of last year’s WTCS Alghero winner, this was the kind of moment Vilaca had frequently found himself in recent years, and one in which he had frequently come up short.
His win in Samarkand, however, appears to have made him a new athlete. After Hidalgo put in a surge on an uphill section, Vilaca used the subsequent downhill to break his Brazilian rival and tore away to a 19 second victory.
Hidalgo hobbled over the line to match his 2nd place from Yokohama. Then, in a wild sprint for 3rd, Ricardo Batista (POR) pounced to a maiden Series medal, holding off 2023 world champion Coninx). In doing so he put two Portuguese men on the same WTCS podium for the first time. In the same sprint, Samarkand bronze medallist Charles Paquet (CAN) overcame Tom Richard (FRA) and João Nuno Batista (POR) to seal 5th place.
More than anything, though, this was the final confirmation of Vilaca’s ascension to a new level. For so long he had believed he could win a WTCS race. Now he knows it. And so does the entire field.