Only Flora Duffy ever took the magic double: winning the Olympics and the World Triathlon Championship in the same year. Today Cassandre Beaugrand did exactly the same thing; after becoming Olympic Champion in Paris earlier this year, she just won the WTCS Grand Final in Torremolinos.
The race started remarkably badly for Beaugrand, who immediately chose a totally wrong line during the swim and found herself alone at a considerable disadvantage from the large group. At the front, meanwhile, it was Bianca Seregni who set the pace and, together with Lena Meissner, was the first to climb out of the water: after 21:59 minutes, the two leaders could go to their bikes, followed a few seconds later by big names such as Emma Lombardi, Olivia Mathias and also the Belgian Jolien Vermeylen. Beaugrand proved able to make up much of her ground already during the swim and still came out of the water in tenth place, only 15 seconds behind.
On the bike, a leading group of twelve women quickly formed: in addition to Beaugrand, Meissner, Lombardi, Mathias and Seregni, they included Kirsten Kasper, Miriam Casillas Garcia, Lena Meissner, Beth Potter, Rosa Maria Tapia Vidal and Vicky Holland. Behind them, some of the big favorites like Georgia Taylor-Brown, Gwen Jorgensen, Kate Waugh, Lisa Tertsch, Alice Betto and Leonie Periault missed the battle and throughout the bike their gap would only widen.
The lead group worked well together and thus saw their lead grow slowly but surely. Once in T2, the gap to the considerable chasing group was almost a minute and a half and so the battle for the podium seemed limited to the twelve women in front. But, during the run it soon became apparent that that battle would only unfold between Beaugrand, Potter, Lehair and Lombardi, as they distanced themselves from the remaining women in the very first kilometers, making it clear that only the win counted.
Even before the five-kilometer mark, so halfway through the run, Beaugrand started to push a bit more and that immediately proved to be the all-decisive acceleration; no one could keep up with the French athlete who eventually ran to victory in a time of 1:56:44. Potter finished second in 1:57:22 and Lombardi third in 1:57:34.
