Who’s Who in the Olympic Triathlon Mixed Relay Teams
Two down and one to go. The fast and furious Triathlon Mixed Relay will make its debut in Tokyo this week-end on 31st July.
It promises to be a fascinating and frantic race to the finish?
There will be 17 teams competing in the race with each one comprising of four athletes: two men and two women.
But Who’s Who in the Olympic relay teams?
Triathlon Mixed Relay Teams
France:
Mixed relay has been dominated by France securing three consecutive world title – their fourth in six years. France have not turned up in the individual events so there will be an incentive for their talented squad to leave Toyko with a medal. For the ladies, Leonie Periault and Cassandre Beaugrand could well go out first and third just as they did in the team’s 2018 and 2020 title wins, while two of Vincent Luis, Leo Bergere and Dorian Coninx will race legs two and four.
Great Britain:
From a five-squad team Great Britain can call upon the individual Olympic silver medallists Alex Yee and Georgia Taylor-Brown with Jonny Brownlee who came 5th in the individual event and either Jessica Learmonth or Vicky Holland although Learmonth must have a very strong case for selection giving her performance in the individual event coming 9th after dominating the swim section. Brownlee is the only squad member who was involved in all three Great Britain’s World title winning teams in 2011, 2012 and 2014.
USA:
The USA, with Olympic bronze medalist Katie Zaferes, Summer Rappaport and Taylor Knibb to choose between for the two women’s legs. Perennial podium finishers in recent years, you have to go back to Nottingham 2018 for their last team gold, but Morgan Pearson will want to put in a massive leg after a disappointing individual result by his recent standards, while Kevin McDowell will still be riding high despite the exertions of his sixth-place finish in the Toyko individual race.
Australia:
Australia is the only nation to have the luxury of a full 6-squad team through qualification but also now having the dilemma of who to choose with line ups having varied in recent years. The Australians last topped the podium in Abu Dhabi two years ago, with Ashleigh Gentle on the opening leg, Emma Jeffcoat and Jacob Birtwhistle on three and four. Birtwhistle is widely considered to have one of the strongest final legs in the business although he did sustain a broken nose in the individual event and could be out of the running and may use the experience of Aaron Royle. Or will Australians be bold and turn to the young guns of Jaz Hedgeland and Luke Willian.
New Zealand
New Zealand have a young team but with great experience having raced together multiple times and most recently won the U23/Junior World Championships in Lausanne back in 2019. 23-year-old Hayden Wilde winning the Olympic Bronze and Tayler Reid having a sound individual race, together with the ladies of Ainsley Thorpe who will want to bounce back from bad luck early on the bike in the individual race while Nicole Van Der Kaay, the oldest of the team at 25, finished strong in 29th place.
Belgium
The Belgium quartet of Claire Michel, Jelle Geens, Valerie Barthelemy and Marten Van Riel line up together. Bronze at the European Championships, winners of the qualification event in Lisbon, Geens was sadly missing from the individual races on Monday due to a postitive covid test so will be hungry to help the team to the podium. The big question mark is whether Claire Michel’s calf injury will make the Kiwis have to withdraw.
Germany
Team Germany’s selection criteria for the Olympic Games made their priorities clear: they held a qualification event over the super-sprint format that saw Anabel Knolland Justus Nieschlag confirmed alongside Laura Lindemann and Jonas Schomburgfor the team.
Netherlands
The Netherlands left their two men off the individual start and keep them fresh for Saturday morning, while Rachel Klamer delivered a majestic fourth-place finish and Maya Kingma recovered from a difficult start to finish 11th and will be ready to help power the Dutch into contention.
Switzerland
Switzerland was the first ever World Champions back in 2009 and will have the combined talents of Nicola Spirig, Jolanda Annen, Max Studer and Andrea Salvisberg lining up, all capable of delivering the magic required to scoop that Olympic medal.
Spain will have Mario Mola and Fernando Alarza teaming up with Miriam Casillas Garcia and Anna Godoy Contreras, Italy counts on Angelica Olmo, Verena Steinhauser, Gianluca Pozzatti and Delian Stateff and Canada will be backing themselves with Joanna Brown and Amelie Kretz joining forces with Matthew Sharpe and Alexis Lepage who replaces Tyler Mislawchuk who is suffering an achilles injury.
Hungary will have Bence Bicsak who came 7th in the men’s event will line up with Tamas Toth, Zsanett Bragmayer and Zsofia Kovacs, while the ROC squad will see the Polyanskiy brothers Dmitry and Igor, Anastasia Gorbunova and Alexandra Razarenova go for gold with Mexico set to go with Irving Perez, Crisanto Grajales, Cecilia Perez and Claudia Rivas.
Hosts Japan have men’s individual race top 20 finishers Kenji Nener and Makoto Odakura lining up with Niina Kishimoto and Yuko Takahashi, while Team Austria will see Lukas Hollaus and Alois Knabl join forces with Lisa Perterer and Julia Hauser.
You won’t be seeing the Olympic Gold medallist in the relay as Flora Duffy is the only triathlete representing the tiny island of Bermuda and Kiristian Blummentflet will not take part as Team Norway only had one woman qualifying for Tokyo so cannot make up a team.
No return for Richard Murray either having overcome his heart surgery as Team South Africa have had to withdraw after Rio bronze medallist Henri Schoeman suffered a stress fracture in his foot on Monday.
The race will go by in a flash – less than 90 minutes. It’s fast, it’s tactical and it’s exhausting.
Each athlete will have to swim for 300m, cycle for 6.8km and run for 2km before tapping the hand of their teammate to pass the relay always in the order female-male-female-male.
Full start lists will be available here two hours before the race
Saturday 07:30am local time and 00:30 CEST (Friday 11:30pm BST and 6:30pm Eastern).
