Face it, Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde are the kings of draft-legal racing right now

While it’s fun, while writing pre-race stories, to try and come up with options of how a number of athletes could vie for the win at a World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS) race, for much of the last two years there have really only been two key players in draft-legal racing – Great Britain’s Alex Yee and New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde. Yes, we know that France’s Leo Bergere managed to eke past both of them with a big win at the series championship last year, but his surprise world title turned out to be the exception that proves the rule.

Leo Bergere takes Grand Final and surprise world championship title

In the three WTCS events of 2023, Yee has taken two (Abu Dhabi and today’s race in Cagliari), while Wilde took the win in Yokohama earlier this month.

Yee even managed to work his way back into the mix in the swim after falling during the beach start, hitting the beach along with Wilde, Bergere and Great Britain’s Jonathan Brownlee 14 seconds behind the lead group that included France’s Dorian Coninx, South Africa’s Jamie Riddle and Hungary’s Mark Devay.

Out of T1 there was a large group of 24 leading the way, with the second group that included Olympic and Ironman champ Kristian Blummenfelt (NOR) and Jelle Geens (BEL). The lead group would steadily gain time on the chasers, eventually hitting T2 with a lead of 80 seconds.

Germany’s Jonas Schomburg took things out fast during the opening stages of the run, but by the 1 km point Yee and Hayden had pulled clear of the rest of the group and moved to the front.  The two pushed each other until the closing stages of the run, with Yee finally pulling clear over the last few hundred metres for the win. The Brit ran a 28:30 split, almost a minute quicker than he ran a year ago when he won here in Cagliari.

Behind the first two, Bergere took the race for the top Frenchman, finishing third ahead of countrymen Dorian Coninx (now the WTCS leader) and Pierre Le Corre.

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