After Dorian Coninx already claimed a particularly spectacular victory earlier today at the WTCS Quiberon, it became at least as exciting just now during the women’s race: in a thrilling finale, Cassandre Beaugrand and the still young Tilda Månsson went side-by-side towards the finish line, until the French Olympic Champion made a decisive acceleration and thus secured the victory. With this, she wins her second WTCS out of two races she started in this year.
It was a matter of not blinking, perhaps even holding your breath, because it remained exciting for a long time at WTCS Quiberon. That tension wasn’t there yet during the swim and actually not during the bike leg either – a few groups formed in the first kilometers, but soon all the ladies came together and ultimately this large peloton rode together towards T2 – but during the run, it completely went off. Both the audience along the sidelines and viewers of the livestream were fully catered to with a sensational run that left nothing to the imagination.
In that run, it was Beaugrand who immediately took the lead, and only the Belgian Jolien Vermeylen and Luxembourgish Jeanne Lehair could keep up, while after one kilometer, the French Emma Lombardi and British Georgia Taylor-Brown also joined. For Taylor-Brown, joining the lead group was short-lived; halfway through the run, so after 2.5 kilometers, she lost contact again, while Månsson managed to bridge the gap at that exact moment. It was also immediately the moment that Lehair took the plunge and took over the lead work from Beaugrand.
That turned out to be a clever piece of bluffing from Lehair, because only a few hundred meters later Beaugrand passed her again, and it was that same Lehair who had to let the lead group go. Shortly after, the pace also proved too high for Lombardi and Vermeylen, leaving only Beaugrand and Månsson together.
The final kilometer thus became wonderfully exciting, though Beaugrand seemingly easily decided the race in the last three hundred meters with a final acceleration. She won the race in a time of 58:29. Månsson finished second eight seconds later, and Vermeylen finished third, thirteen seconds behind; her first podium finish at a WTCS.
