Team NZL 1 has emerged from a wintry Hastings morning with a heartwarming win at the Oceania Triathlon Mixed Relay Championships in a positive signal ahead of the opening of the Road to LA ‘28.
While not an official qualifier for the XXXIV Summer Olympiad, continental success against the reigning World champions will have done New Zealand’s confidence, and current world ranking of 10th, no harm as they build towards key qualifiers in Alghero, Quiberon and Hamburg from late May-mid July.
Eva Goodisson, Saxon Morgan, Nicole van der Kaay and Hayden Wilde got the job done for Team NZL 1 and more comfortably than the finish chute video Tri NZ posted on its Facebook channel earlier Monday might have suggested. Wilde guided the Kiwi quartet home with room to spare ahead of AusTriathlon 1 (Richelle Hill, Lachlan Jones, Malowiecki, Luke Schofield) who were lucky not to be disqualified after anchor Schofield’s premature escape from T1.
The inadvertent short cut through, instead of around the transition zone cones, meant the final margin of victory was closer than it might have been but Tri NZ saw no reason to protest as they’d already secured the maximum allocation of points available by winning.
Even if AusTri 1 had been DQ’d, the secondary points allocation would have rolled down to the AusTri 2 team (Aspen Anderson, Oscar Woottom, Elie Hoitink, Jayden Schofield) which finished third ahead of the NZL 2 quartet of Brea Roderick, Henry McMecking, Phoebe Carter and Joel Lange. Carter had shifted up from the NZL 3 line-up after the overnight withdrawal of Ainsley Thorpe with a calf niggle.
The first of the two 12-month Olympic qualification windows opens May 18 which means the World Triathlon Mixed Relay Series races at WTCS Alghero, Quiberon and Hamburg all fall inside the window. Critically, the LA ‘28 Olympic pathway runs through the Mixed Relay first with 22 of the 55 individual start slots per gender allocated via relay-qualified nations, thus Tri NZ’s relay-first focus re qualification.
A strong opening leg from Goodison set the tone for Team NZL 1, the Gold Coast-based Kiwi pushed all the way by Roderick. Backing up his silver medal effort in Sunday’s Oceania Sprint Championships, Morgan towed Jones around the bike course and yet still managed to tag van der Kaay in pole position. From there, the two-time Taupo Olympian compounded NZL’s 1 advantage.
Van der Kaay tagged Wilde in first and while Luke Schofield caught the Kiwis talisman in the Mitre 10 Park Hawke’s Bay canoe polo pool, a slick exit from the water and faster transition saw Wilde ride away. He might have been surprised with how close Luke Schofield felt on the bike leg initially but that was only because the Aussie’s navigation system got crosswired by all the cones.
Australia were missing big male names in Hastings – Matt Hauser among them – but NZL too were down on potential firepower with Paris Olympian Dylan McCullough and Tokyo rep Tayler Reid out injured. As such, the resumption of the trans-Tasman battle in Italy, France at the Hamburg World Championships will be an interesting sub plot to keep tabs on.
But for now, it’s advantage Team NZL.
📷 @ScottieTPhoto
