Saxon Morgan will reach the milestone of 100 World Triathlon-sanctioned starts when he toes the line in Saturday’s WTCS Weihai.
The 26-year-old Cantabrian has been one of the quiet achievers of the Tri NZ elite program in a career spanning a decade since his debut at the New Zealand Junior Championships in January 2016.
Morgan was 8th in that Wellington race featuring names such as Trent Dodds, Kyle Smith and Dylan McCullough.
In the 10 years since, Morgan has secured one win – at the 2019 European Junior Cup Rigu in Lativa – nine podiums and a finishing rate at 95 percent in short course racing around the globe.
The most recent of his podiums was a season-opening silver medal behind Hayden Wilde at the Oceania Sprint Championships in Napier on March 1. Of his eight additional starts in 2026, four have been at WTCS level: Alghero (27th), Quiberon (33rd), Hamburg (49th) and London (36th).
The WTCS results were been tainted by spells of injury and illness and Morgan would no doubt love to live up to something close to his ranking of 16th for the Weihai standard distance race which will be streamed on Triathlonlive.tv at 1pm (NZT) on Saturday.
Any such result would bolster his current World, Olympic, WTCS and Continental rankings that sit at 58th, 90th, 48th and 7th respectively. It will be no cinch in Weihai, however, not in a field featuring world No.1 Matthew Hauser and two other hard-nosed Aussies ranked in the top five, Luke Willian and Callum McCluskey.
Thorpe ranked 38th
The depth of field in the women’s race, at least at the pointy end, is even more daunting for Ainsley Thorpe who continues her comeback from a reoccurring leg stress reaction in Weihai.
The top three seeds for the 4pm Saturday start on Triathlonlive.tv are Brit Beth Potter, Germany’s Lisa Tertsch and Frenchwoman Cassandre Beaugrand, the reigning Olympic champion. American legend Gwen Jorgensen, the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic champion, is also on the start-list.
World No.115 Thorpe is ranked 38th in the 43-strong Weihai field in what will be her 109th start at World Triathlon level. The Cambridge-based Aucklander’s career includes seven wins, 26 podiums (at an impressive 24 percent hit rate) and encouraging comeback performances since her 10th at Oceania Sprint Championships Napier in March including 7th, 19th and 8th placings at Americas Triathlon Cup Magog, World Cup Edmonton and World Cup Rio respectively.
