ITU WTS Grand Final

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August 31st sees the culmination of this years elite, professional short-course race season with the International Triathlon Unions WTS Grand Final. The womens race holds way more interest for me, and our household. Not only do I know a couple of the competitors, but it’s also a more interesting clash of the “comeback kids“.

Flora Duffy, OBE, has an amazing record, 2x World Champion in triathlon  and Olympic Gold Medalist, and is one of the all-time women’s triathlon top athletes[Wikipedia]. Flora suffered a foot injury in 2018, ad despite an attempt earlier this year to comeback hadn’t made it. Then earlier this month at the Tokyo test event, Flora was delighted with her 3rd place, only surprisingly to be installed into 1st place after the disqualification of joint winners from Team GB, Jess Learmonth, and Georgia Taylor-Brown.

Flora will be up against WTS Champion in waiting Katie Zaferes. At the Olympic Test event, Katie crashed out on the bike course(more on this in a later post), and suffered 23 stitches in her mouth from when her gums separated on impact in her lower mouth, a broken nose, and some bumps and bruises. In her instagram post, Katie described her injury as “nothing too serious”. The opportunity to see Katie, Flora and a full squad of fit Team GB athletes racing together simply is a much bigger attraction than the mens race.

I know the BBC will be covering both races live, and the increasingly excellent Triathlonlive.tv will be streaming the complete WTS Grand Final including age group, paratriathlon, Junior, Under-23 and elite championships. If you don’t subscribe, you can buy a $2 pass for the month.

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