Dylan McCullough has capped his brilliant breakout year by absolutely decimating the field at World Triathlon Cup Tongyeong.
In an emphatic hooter-to-tape performance reminiscent of his runaway Oceania Sprint Championship victory in Tasmania in mid-March, the 23-year-old Aucklander waltzed to his maiden win on World Triathlon’s second tier circuit by a whopping 63 seconds.
The only difference in South Korea was that McCullough made his race winning break out of T2 whereas it had been early on the bike in hilly Devonport.
After setting the pace for much of the swim, McCullough made the swiftest escape from T1. Only lanky Pole Maciej Bruzdziak could hang on and by the end of the 40km bike the pair enjoyed a mammoth 2:36 buffer.
But any prospect of a two-man foot race to the blue carpet instantly vanished as McCullough bolted out of T2, leaving the Pole looking like he was running on the spot in a painful gait, the bike exertion clear for all to see.
McCullough, 4th in Tongyeong last year, stopped the clock in Saturday’s standard distance race in 1:45:08, more than a minute clear of freshly minted U23 World Champion David Cantero Del Campo (1:46:11) and Bruzdziak (1:46:19) who grimly held on for his maiden World Cup medal.
The win was sweet revenge after the Kiwi’s 8th place in the U23 Worlds in Torremolinos last week where McCullough, seemingly running on empty at the end of a long season, could only marvel like everyone else as Spaniard Del Campo roared home with a ridiculous 10km split of 29:34 in his homeland.
New Zealand team-mate Saxon Morgan, an impressive 8th out of the water in Tongyeong, eventually settled for 27th in 1:49:58. Earlier, Gold Coast-based Eva Goodisson matched her second-best World Cup result with 11th in the women’s race despite revealing she has been struggling with a “stress reaction in my shin” in Europe in her slow comeback from a neural back injury. Ainsley Thorpe withdrew on the 1st lap of the run.
But this was McCullough’s day. Indeed, it was so impressive it left lead Triathlonlive.tv commentator Oliver Wilson “running out of superlatives for the race he’s had here in Tongyeong”.
“He could almost get an early flight back to New Zealand,” Wilson continued.
“It’s like the others are in a different race,” co-commentator Helen Jenkins, a former GBR representative, said earlier as McCullough strode away, victory inevitable.
The win was New Zealand’s first World Cup win since Hayden Wilde in New Plymouth in March 2022 and eclipsed McCullough’s previous best World Cup result, a silver medal in Miyazaki, Japan last October.
Throw in Devonport, a bronze medal at the Mixed Relay at the World Championships in Hamburg, his domestique role for silver medallist Wilde in Paris and his own impressive 19th place on Olympic debut, plus a career-best 8th at the recent WTCS Weihai in China, and it has been some year.
Remember too that his breakthrough 2024 was disrupted by a fibula stress fracture post Devonport.
“Yeah, that was incredible,” McCullough said of his career best win.
“It’s the way I want to race. Swim hard, ride hard, not just sit in the pack and then, yeah, run as hard as you can. So, I was really, really proud that, yeah, we stayed away. And kudos to this man [Bruzdziak]. I couldn’t have done it without him. He was super strong today.”
You had a great swim and then you and Bruzdziak just took off on the bike. Was that premeditated?
“No, not at all. I felt really good in the water. I don’t really normally like to lead the swim, but, yeah, I was feeling good and wanted to push the pace and then, just get on the bike and push as many watts as you can and see who’s around. And, yeah, we worked really well together. I’m really glad it was the two of us.
As you kept extending on the bike, what was going through your mind?
“We don’t have any staff or anything here, so I was trying to pick points on the road and then look at my Garmin and see what the time was to the pack. And each lap I could see it was going out. And I think on that last part, it was nearly two and a half minutes. So I was like, far out, this is unreal.”
Not half as surreal as the lead McCullough took onto the run which he could manage, clocking 32:21 for the 10km compared to Del Campo’s 30:20.
“I was quite confident coming into the run, just to control it and run my pace. And I knew the Spanish guys were really quick, but, yeah, still really happy to hold on”
Did last year in Miyazaki, when you led only to be run down, play on your mind?
“Yeah, it was. I was hurting in the last 2½k today. It’s been a long season and I really didn’t want that to be like Miyazaki last year. So I dug deep and, yeah, the gap was enough in the end.”
