A member of France’s bronze-medal winning relay team at the Tokyo Olympics last year, anyone who watched Cassandre Beaugrand win World Triathlon Series (WTS) Hamburg in 2018 is all-too-aware of her running talents. That day she ran away from the world’s best triathletes for her first WTS win, and, the next day, helped France win the World Triathlon Mixed Relay World Championship.
The 24-year-old has long been arguably as talented a runner as she is a triathlete. As a junior Beaugrand won the French national cross country championship in 2013 and 2014, and set national records for her age group in the 1,500 m the same years. She also won the European Olympic Youth Festival 1,500 m in 2013. She finished 10th at the World Junior Track and Field Championships in 2014 and was fifth at the 3,000 m at the European Junior Championships in 2015. Those same years she was also competing as an elite triathlete, taking the silver medal at the European Sprint Cup in Bratislava in 2014 and helping France to a silver medal at the Mixed Relay World Championship that year, too. She represented France at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
Beaugrand’s last international track race was a 3,000 m outdoor event in Nice, France in 2017, where she ran 9:08.54. Last weekend she made her international indoor track debut at the Meeting Elite de Miramas, and bettered that time by a whopping six seconds, finishing fourth in the race that featured an international field. She was the fastest woman from France, finishing in a time of 9:02:97.
Based on her Instagram posts of late, Beaugrand has been getting lots of swim and bike training done along with her running, making last weekend’s race even more impressive. In 2024 Beaugrand will certainly be looking to try and excel in both the relay and individual events at the Paris Olympic Games – her speedy run performance this weekend certainly bodes well for that goal.
