Van der Kaay tops Kiwi results at WTCS Hamburg as off-colour Wilde has season bow penalised for oft-ignored scissor snip

🇩🇪 Season best results by all three Kiwi women, a commendable WTCS debut for Henry McMecking and a chance to swiftly move on to the World Triathlon Mixed Relay Championships in the wee hours of Monday NZT.

That’s the partly satisfied, far from content and forward-looking mood in the Team NZL camp after Nicole van der Kaay headlined the Kiwi results in the individual sprints at WTCS Hamburg overnight.

The Taupo 30-year-old’s 19^th went some way easing the sting of Hayden Wilde’s uncharacteristic 27^th in the men’s race, an off-colour performance that included a 10 second penalty for cutting down the race number attached to the seat post on his bike. It’s an offence oft overlooked but not by the technical officials in Hamburg and it only compounded a near back-of-the-pack swim for the Kiwi talisman in his repeatedly delayed WTCS season bow.

Matthew Hauser’s title hat-trick for Australia and back-to-back wins for Frenchwoman Leonie Periault nabbed the global headlines while the Kiwi performances, solid but unspectacular, melted into the result sheets with Eva Goodisson and Brea Roderick separated by one place – 26^th plays 27^th – and 21 seconds while Wilde led the trio of Kiwi men with McMecking 41^st on debut and fellow Cantab Saxon Morgan 49^th.  

Sunday’s Mixed Relay – with live coverage from 2:45am Monday NZT on triathlonlive.tv – is a chance to end the Hamburg weekend positively. The Team NZL quartet will be named around 8am Hamburg time Sunday (6pm NZT) and while winning to claim an automatic LA28 relay slot is the goal, a top seven performance would be a handy result given the quality of the talent assembled in Germany’s second largest city.

NVDK Kiwi best

Van der Kaay’s 19^th bettered her 25^th at WTCS Quiberon last month and is her best results at the top level since her 6^th and 8^th places in Hamburg and Sunderland in the critical second qualification window to the Paris Olympics in mid 2023.

Likewise, you can’t quibble with Goodisson’s 26^th as it is a place better than her matching efforts of 27^th in Alghero and Quiberon, and close to her WTCS best of 23^rd at last October’s Grand Final in Wollongong. Nor Roderick’s 27^th which easily eclipsed her 32^nd in Quiberon and her 43^rd placing in Hamburg 12 months ago. Indeed, the Cantab’s performance was close to her best at the highest level, 24^th at the Paris Test Event which doubled as a WTCS round in August 2023.

Still, the cold facts tell their own story. While Goodisson was attached to the front of the race with the 9^th fastest swim – 9:52 for the 750m compared to Italian Bianca Seregni’s chart-topping 09:24 – a slow T1 cost the Gold Coast-based Kiwi valuable places out onto the bike.  Roderick and van der Kaay were 27^th and 33^rd respectively out of the water and the effort to remain in the race on the bike told on the run, van der Kaay’s 16:47 split in the heat 51seconds slower than Periault’s winning 15:56 split.

In the final wash-up, the Kiwis’ run splits – van der Kaay 16:47, Goodisson 17:41 and Roderick 18:04 – left them with the 15^th, 37^th and 41^st fastest 5km times.

Wilde admits he’s ‘not at the level yet’

The men’s race had been billed as a fight for a hat-trick of Hamburg titles between Wilde, the 2022 and 2023 champion, and 2024, 2025 winner Hauser. But that narrative was over once Wilde exited the swim in 53^rd place – 45 seconds behind the Aussie who was second in the swim on the coattails of the human, Hungarian fish Márk Dévay.

Wilde fought as he does on the bike but the penalty, which he took on the first lap of the run, was curtains to his hopes of a miracle comeback. Wilde’s 14:44 split for the 5km was naturally impacted by the 10 second stop-go penalty and the lost momentum so not too far off Hauser’s race defining 14:18.

As ever, Wilde, who missed Alghero and Quiberon with a virus, refused to offer excuses.

“Perfect planning prevents poor performance. This is what my team and I plan for each race, whether this is training leading into the race or the race itself. We try to get as close to the 5 Ps. My race [today] and prep? Far from it…” Wilde wrote on social media.

“It’s been a rough 4-5 week roller coaster. Some days you’re on and feel yourself, some days you’re battling. We did all we could do have a fighting chance to be as good on the day but when you’re not 100 you get exposed quickly in short course. I’m just not at the level yet. it’s frustrating but that’s sport.

“My team and I will get to the bottom of this rough patch. It’s good to get back racing short course… it’s relentless and cut throat but that’s why we come back.”

Morgan was the best of the Kiwis in the swim after exiting the water in 27^th but melted in the heat with a 16:31 run split.

McMecking, meanwhile, was 43^rd out of the water, took some turns at the front of his chase group on the bike and recorded a 15:16 run split in a career benchmark moment full of learning.

Roll on the Mixed Relay.

2026 WTCS Hamburg – Selected Individual Results

July 11, 2026 (Sprint Distance 750m swim/ 20km bike/ 5km run)

MEN
🥇 Matthew Hauser (AUS) 50:07
🥈 Vasco Vilaca (POR) 50:10 (+00:03)
🥉 Henry Graf (GER) 50:15 (+00:08)

Also NZL
27. Hayden Wilde (NZL) 51:17 (+01:10)
41. Henry McMecking (NZL) 51:52 (+01:45)
49. Saxon Morgan (NZL) 53:01 (+2:54)

WOMEN
🥇 Leonie Periault (FRA) 55:51
🥈 Lisa Tertsch (GER) 55:56 (+00:05)
🥉 Tilda Månsson (SWE) 56:03 (+00:12)

Also NZL
19. Nicole van der Kaay (NZL) 56:48 (+00:57)
26. Eva Goodisson (NZL) 57:35 (+01:44)
27. Brea Roderick (NZL) 57:56 (+2:05)