At the last Olympics, the Mixed Team Relay made its Games debut to rave reviews. While it got off to a good start in Tokyo, the action was cranked up a notch at the latest instalment in Paris. Earlier this week we were treated to a truly spectacular finish as Germany denied the United States and Great Britain by the narrowest of margins and in this article we break down five of the leading talking points from the race.
Getting it started
Put simply, it is a flex to be able to lead off a relay with the newly-crowned Olympic champion. This was the position the British found themselves in as they called upon Alex Yee to launch the defence of their Olympic relay title. Unsurprisingly, the Olympic gold medallist did not disappoint. Yee was the fastest of the first legs, clocking a total time of 20:03. That handed Britain a 3 second lead over the German team and provided the platform from which they laid out their assault.
Olympic silver medallist Hayden Wilde likewise led off for the New Zealand team, although interestingly France opted to preserve their Olympic medallist Leo Bergere until the third leg. Then again, with Pierre Le Corre, who finished 4th in the individual race, France had riches aplenty when it came to their lead off options. At the other end of the race, with the women going last, Cassandre Beaugrand and Beth Potter were two of the Olympic medallists to anchor their respective teams’ relays. However Julie Derron, the Olympic silver medallist, took on the second leg for the Swiss team, serving some variety in the team strategies.
Go with the flow
Managing the currents proved key to the swim, a lesson all the participants would have learned in the individual races. Two athletes that stood out in this regard were Lisa Tertsch, who took a funky line in an attempt to make up time on her British rival, and Taylor Knibb who also navigated the currents well on the final leg.
Knibb had a particularly crucial swim as her efforts set the tone for vaulting her American team into the hunt for the gold medal with her field-leading leg. She also gained significant time on her rivals during the bike but it was the swim that really sparked her momentum. Moreover, Knibb’s swim possessed a redemptive quality. In the individual race, she did not get her swim quite right and exited the water in 33rd place and quite a way behind the leaders. From there, she never quite got into the race. With her effort in the relay, though, she reasserted her quality in the water and showed how dangerous she can be.
Mexico dreams
Heading into the second leg, it did not look like it was necessarily going to be Mexico’s day. Aram Michell Peñaflor Moysen enjoyed a good swim and bike but did not quite manage to hold position over the run and handed over with only two teams behind. Then Rosa Maria Tapia Vidal stepped in.
The WTCS medallist revived Mexico’s hopes with an outstanding second leg. Her time of 22:31 was the fastest of all the women of the same section by 10 seconds and only Knibb and Laura Lindemann on the final leg managed to beat Tapia’s time. She lifted her team from a precarious position into one in which Tapia breathed down the necks of the eventual silver medallists, the United States. Although Mexico’s charge ultimately petered out, for a brief moment they found themselves in the thick of the action thanks to Tapia’s surge.
Twinning
In another impressive solo turn, Vasco Vilaca smashed the penultimate leg and shared the fastest split of the segment with Alessio Crociani in 20:16. Vilaca’s efforts went a long way to lifting Portugal into 5th place overall. The curious point to note, though, is more to do with Vilaca’s teammate than his team’s result.
Vilaca and Ricardo Batista actually recorded identical total times of 20:16. They therefore continued a pattern set in the individual race in which Vilaca placed 5th and Batista 6th with the two men separated by a mere 2 seconds. It had already become apparent that Portugal could call upon a fearsome double-punch with their men’s pair. What had not been obvious was how the punches would be essentially of equal strength and only the men of Germany, Britain and Italy combined to produce a better total time across the two male slots.
The charge
After Le Corre’s unfortunate crash, the French team spent the whole morning fighting on the back foot. However, they had an ace up their sleeve in the form of the Olympic champion. Beaugrand flew through the final leg of the race and dragged her team to 4th place. Notably, she ripped a 5:37 split on the 1.8km run.
As it happened, only two women ran faster than Beaugrand. Lindemann clocked 5:34 as she grabbed the gold for Germany. Meanwhile, Tertsch blasted a fantastic 5:24 while overtaking Georgia Taylor-Brown. The two German women had crashed out of the front group in the individual race and after their relay run splits they may be wondering what might have been. At the same time, they would have come up against a truly imperious Cassandre Beaugrand. And who knows, had Beaugrand’s late charge had a greater sniff of a medal, perhaps she would have found yet another gear.
The action in the triathlon world shows no sign of slowing down as the World Multisport Championships in Townsville kick off in the coming days before attention swings back to Paris for the Paralympic Games. Stay abreast with all the latest across all World Triathlon channels.
