The Kiwi sextuple for the first of World Triathlon’s four key mixed relay (MR) races in 2023 has been named as the sport speeds towards next year’s Paris Olympic Games.
The squad includes Howick-raised Ainsley Thorpe.
Hayden Wilde, Nicole van der Kaay, Tayler Reid, Thorpe, Dylan McCullough and Olivia Thornbury have been selected to race at World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS)-Montreal on June 25.
The six will be whittled down to four for the mixed relay, at the discretion of the Tri NZ selection panel, after the individual sprint distance (750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run) races in the Canadian city the previous day.
The announcement comes after a historic day for Kiwi triathlon at World Cup New Plymouth on March 26 with Wilde-Reid and van der Kaay-Thorpe claiming a gold-silver double.
McCullough came close to giving NZL a clean sweep of the male podium with a close 4th in Taranaki while Otago Medical School student Thornbury was the next best Kiwi female in 9th after earlier top 5s at Oceania Cup sprints in Wanaka and Taupo.
Montreal is the fourth of seven WTCS events in 2023. World Triathlon’s premier individual series has three mixed relays tagged to it in 2023: Montreal (June 25), Hamburg (July 16) and Sunderland (July 30).
There will also be a mixed relay dress rehearsal on the final day of the August 17-20 Paris Olympic test event.
Hamburg doubles as the World Triathlon Sprint and Relay Championship and has long been targeted by Tri NZ as a key date on the global calendar with an eye to the XXXIII Olympiad.
With an automatic spot in the relay at Paris ’24 up for grabs, and two male and two female spots for the individual races as a result, the Hamburg relay will be one of the most intensely fought races of the year.
For context, the winning team from last year’s World Triathlon Sprint and Relay Championship, coincidently staged in Montreal, was France.
As hosts, they’re already locked in for Paris ’24, meaning the available Olympic qualification spot rolled down to second-placed Great Britain.
As a consequence, the highest-placed team in Hamburg this July, discounting France and GRB – even if they were to occupy the top two steps of the podium – will qualify for Paris.
If NZL cannot snare that spot in Germany, the key is to be inside the top six nations in the World Triathlon Mixed Relay Qualification Rankings at the March 25, 2024 cut-off, again disregarding France, GBR and whichever nation qualifies in Hamburg.
NZL are currently seventh behind GBR, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and the United States and will look to bolster that position of relative comfort, in addition to working on team tactics, in Montreal.
Anything can happen in sport and especially in triathlon’s rapid-fire male-female-male-female team races, as evidenced at the Oceania Mixed Relay Championship held on the sidelines of Oceania Cup Taupo in February.
There, the NZL 1 team of McCullough, Thorpe, Reid and van der Kaay were on track to win only for Reid to cruelly puncture on the penultimate leg. The NZL II team of Janus Staufenberg,
Thornbury, Trent Thorpe and Brea Roderick duly capitalised to clinch the title ahead of Australia.
Wilde, van der Kaay, Reid and the recently retired Andrea Hansen were 4th at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in July, the last major mixed relay New Zealand competed in.
Before that, NZL finished 4th and 5th at last year’s World Sprint and Relay Championship in Montreal and WTCS Hamburg respectively.
New Zealand has only won once at elite mixed relay level, the final event of the then ITU World Triathlon MR Series in Edmonton, Canada in July 2019.
That team? Wilde, van der Kaay, Reid and Thorpe.
