Georgia Taylor-Brown Clinches win in WTCS Yokohama
In the World Triathlon Championship Series, it was the elite women who were first on the bill to create a showcase in Yokohama as Britain’s Georgia Taylor-Brown clinched the win in Japan.
The standard course conditions were tricky with downpours meaning it was going to be a case of just staying upright for many of the women come the bike section.
As the women dived off the pontoon it was a clean start and a front group of about sixteen formed on the chase to the first buoy with Dutch athlete Maya Kingma and France’s Cassandre Beaugrand, going out hard. These two used swim strengths to pull a few athletes away from the remaining field as Beaugrand exited the water first.
A smooth T1 for all the athletes and a small breakaway was immediately formed, which included, Beaugrand, Kingma, Olympic gold medallist Flora Duffy and silver medallist Georgia Taylor-Brown, and USA’s bike beast Taylor Knibb.
It was treacherous conditions for the athletes who were being cautious around the corners but all athletes in the front pack were pulling turns and staying out of trouble. But in the third lap of nine Lindemann and Beaugrand were involved in a crash that saw them and a handful of other athletes having to withdraw from the race.
By the half way mark the front pack was nine strong and although the chasing pack were taking huge turns at the front, they were nonetheless losing ground on every lap and were some three minutes behind when the front group entered T2.
Exiting T2 it was Kingma and Taylor-Brown first out onto the run course with Duffy, and the two French girls Leonie Periault and U23 World Champion Emma Lombardi chasing them down and after 2km these group of five were running shoulder to shoulder. it was going to be a thrilling run between these five athletes over the remaining 8km to decide who would ultimately take the gold medal.
In the final kilometre Periault attempted to make a break-away but Taylor-Brown was alert to the threat and still had plenty of fuel in the tank to burn as she hauled back Periault and pushed on to break the chasing group as she headed down the blue carpet to cross the winning line.
The valiant effort by Periault saw her rewarded with second place with current World Champion having to settle for third place. Lombardi finished in fourth and Kingma took fifth.
Georgia Taylor-Brown victory takes her to the top the WTCS leader board in 2022.
