Hayden Wilde has ended a “pretty shit week and a half” on a high after today being unveiled as the winner of two of Triathlon New Zealand’s major gongs.
The Whakatāne 28-year-old has predictably been named Long Course and Short Course Male Triathlete-of-the-Year, just the tonic after a virus ruled him out of his much-anticipated WTCS return at Alghero in Italy last weekend.
It’s not been much fun since but Wilde has found his way to San Francisco for the resumption of his T100 Triathlon World Tour title defence on Saturday (1:30am Sunday NZT).
The awards are a nice pick me up. He’s talking a typically good game too, albeit with an unfamiliar voice.
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“Now my voice is gone. That’s kind of new. That’s actually very new,” he said in a T100 video promo.
“Obviously missed last week, which is a bit of a pain in the ass. It’s been a pretty shit week and a half to be honest,” the PTO world No.1 continued.
“Tuesday before Alghero last week, I was feeling really great and did a track session with World Triathlon and said I was in my best shape. And then the next day just came down like a bunch of shit.
“I had like no flu symptoms. Throat was good. Nose was good. But yeah, now I just got a sore throat, so hopefully it’ll be all right.
“At the end of the day, see if I can get some points on the board, so it was either miss this one or, yeah, probably not fight for the title.”
Wilde’s health is the major intrigue hovering over the second round of the men’s regular season with its start off the side of a passenger ferry in San Fran Bay, the so-called Race from Alcatraz.
Given his incredible win streak in T100 – he’s triumphed in seven of his last eight starts and that 8th place at the penultimate round in Dubai last year was a lap counting anomaly and easily explained away – the Kiwi would normally be an unbackable favourite.
It includes a record smashing margin of victory in the season opener in Singapore but Wilde’s fitness in the wake of the untimely virus is an unknown as he prepares to line up alongside the likes of Rico Bogen, Morgan Pearson, Leo Bergere, Henri Schoeman and Jake Birthwhistle.
That aside, Wilde is happy to be the hunted in the Race to Qatar which has two further regular season stops after San Fran – French Riviera (September 19) and Saudi Arabia (November TBC) – before the grand final in Doha on December 11.
“I hope to be that guy that kind of pushes the sport to a new element and kind of try and keep that level of, I guess, high quality,” Wilde said in an interview with Triathlon magazine.
“And hopefully that brings up other athletes to really kind of push me at the front. And I feel like every race, [they’re] getting closer and closer, and it’s really cool to see as well. “It won’t take too long for the rest of the field to kind of bridge that gap. It just means more exciting racing and just, yeah, always kind of pushing the boundaries and going faster and faster each time.”
T100 San Fran start list
