Hayes: World Class In Leeds
Carolyn Hayes has all but secured her participation at the Tokyo Olympics this summer following a 10th place finish at the World Triathlon Championship Series event in Leeds.
The result is Hayes’s best performance at World Championship Series level and follows her silver medal last month at a World Cup race in Lisbon.
The final race of the qualifying period takes place in Mexico next weekend but Hayes won’t need to make the journey, such is the security of her grip on the ‘Europe New Flag’ position in the Olympic Rankings Simulation.
How the Race Unfolded
An extremely exciting race saw the women’s field split to pieces from the very start due to the presence of IRONMAN specialist and uber-swimmer Lucy Charles Barkley.
Hayes exited the water 80secs off Charles’s pace but she had good company and entered the 40km bike in a large group lying 4th on the road.
With eventual winner Maya Kingma, second placed Jessica Learmonth and bronze medalist Sophie Coldwell working very effectively together, and Flora Duffy leading a chasing quartet to great effect behind, catching the front would always be a tough challenge for Hayes’s group.
And so it was that by T2 a time deficit in excess of 2mins meant Hayes’s pack, which included Non Stanford, Cassandre Beaugard and Katie Zaferies was effectively racing for the places from 7th onwards.
Hayes executed a textbook T2, touching the blue carpet first among at least 20 women and flying out of transition with a 5sec advantage.
She ran superbly over the 10km course, covering the distance in 35mins 10secs – the 9th quickest of the entire field. Hayes finished in 10th place overall with a time of 1:58:16.
Full Results from the Elite Women’s Race
White – One Final Hurdle
Later in the day, Russell White finished 35th in the men’s race. A slower than expected swim cost White as it left him in a bike pack that was unable to make contact with the main body of the race for the entire 40km bike.
White ran an excellent 33min 13sec 10km and said afterwards that while the result will not move him up the Olympic rankings, his run and bike performance gives him confidence as he heads in to the final make or break race of qualifying next weekend.
“It was the best I felt so far this season bike- and run-wise so the body’s still holding up. I finished strong and felt good. The contenders around me all pulled out or DNF’d and it wasn’t that they were saving themselves, they were all struggling. So finishing the race and finishing strong was a positive.
White continues to hold the 53th and final spot on the Olympic Qualification Simulation and travels to Huatulco to defend his positon.
“It all comes down to Mexico now, but I am still in the driver’s seat and still have that slot. I just have to go for it. It’s going to be super hot – in the high 30s so it could come down to a hard messy run,” White said.
