Wilde Wins Race, Yee Claims World Championship in Torremolinos

Alex Yee came into the World Triathlon Championship Series Grand Final in Torremolinos needing a sixth place finish to finally earn his first world championship. That title has proven elusive, with three straight tries for Yee coming up short.

Today, that streak ended — although it took another outstanding run from Yee in order to make it happen, using the second fastest run of the day to move into the podium places and secure the world title. He joins women’s champion Cassandre Beaugrand in pulling off the Olympic Gold – WTCS World title double in the same season.

Yee, post-race, said, “This has evaded me for the last three years and makes it even sweeter. It is probably something that has haunted me day in day out and I wanted to put on a show and a smile on peoples’ faces and I’m World Champion. There’s always going to be pressure in these races… but pressure makes diamonds.”

Fellow series contenders Hayden Wilde and Leo Bergere gave it their best, blowing the race apart to take gold and silver on the day, and bronze and silver, respectively, for the year.

Wilde and Bergere were close enough out of the water to help create a five man leading effort, joined by Vincent Luis, Tayler Reid, and Simon Westermann. Yee was in the first chase group, led by swim pacer Matt Hauser, but when Hauser crashed out of the race, the chase pack slowly lost time on each lap to the leaders.

By the time the leaders had racked their bikes and swapped into run shoes, the deficit to the chasers was 1:40. The race win was almost certainly up the road, with Yee needing to put in an effort to nab the top-six finishing position required to claim the world championship. After one lap, Yee had closed almost 40 seconds on positions three through five on the road, and made the comfortable pass into a podium position just over the halfway mark. Wilde cleared Bergere, eventually opening a full minute margin of victory in one of his finest performances.

Wilde enjoyed his victory, saying “I had the same sort of plan as the Olympic Games really, two laps hard, one lap easy then go and had a really nice gap. It’s a bit disappointing not to win the World Championships but to win the Grand Final is something special.”

Race Results

Photo: World Triathlon

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