Cassandre Beaugrand Takes Home Olympic Victory

Cassandre Beaugrand used a final lap surge on the run to claim victory in the women’s Olympic triathlon event, winning a gold medal on home soil.

Beaugrand was near the front of the race all day, coming out of the water in sixth and part of an early group that formed and caught swim leader Flora Duffy. That group mostly stayed together, minus Kirsten Kasper, who crashed out of it (she would eventually finish in 49th) and Laura Lindemann (who crashed on the second to last lap but would hang on for eighth).

On the run, Beaugrand was part of an elite group of four that powered away from the pack, joined by Julie Derron, Beth Potter, and Emma Lombardi. With just over 1000 meters left to run, Beaugrand upped her pace and splintered the group. Derron was able to best manage, holding onto the silver medal, and Potter held out for bronze.

It was an extremely challenging day for the women, starting with a swim in the Seine River that saw currents nearing the one meter per second limit for flow in the center of the river. The strong current saw some pre-race favorites caught out, like Kate Waugh and Taylor Knibb, relegating them to chasing all day and never making in-roads for medal contention. Waugh finished 15th, with Knibb in 19th.

As the Race Unfolded

The pre-race talk, as expected, was whether we would even be racing today, given the water quality issues that postponed the men’s event to later today. At 3:45 AM local time, we had our answer: we’d be going racing today.

Although the water quality passed, the next challenging piece was the current. With such high current, navigating the course (and swimming the upstream leg) would prove critical. As such, some pre-race favorites found themselves relegated from the lead pack in a hurry, including the likes of Waugh and Knibb.

Flora Duffy, using her wealth of experience to navigate the course, led the swim in 22:05, an eternity in World Triathlon speak. Those in the same zip code as Duffy included Vittoria Lopes, Maya Kingma, Georgia Taylor-Brown, Beth Potter, Cassandre Beaugrand, Emma Lombardi, Kirsten Kasper, and Taylor Spivey.

Onto the bike course, and it became clear that the race would be a question of who could survive the course, with multiple bike crashes on course that impacted athletes like Kasper, and led to the withdrawal of Norway’s Lotte Miller on Lap 4. Duffy was solo for the early stages of the bike, but the conditions and crashes soon led to an elite group on the front of the race that had managed to survive the swim and the bike course itself, with Duffy, Beaugrand, Spivey, Taylor-Brown, Potter, Lombardi, Kingma, Julie Derron, and Zsanett Kuttor-Bragmayer taking over and taking turns, trying to ensure some of the bike firepower from behind could not make inroads. Waugh and Knibb, the strongest of cyclists in the chase, were whittling the deficit down each lap, bringing it from 1:40 at the start of the bike to 1:04 by the time they hit the blue carpet for the run.

Heading out for the run, Derron led out of transition, with Spivey, Duffy, and Potter hot on her heels. Early on in the first run lap and the former lead group of nine was now six. Beaugrand and Derron drove a blistering pace, with Potter, Duffy, Taylor-Brown, and Lombardi the only ones able to hold touch. Spivey, who prefers to build into the run, was quickly on her own, 15 seconds back in the opening kilometers. Soon the pace was too hot for Duffy and Taylor-Brown, with just four in the lead group after the first lap.

The frantic pace of the front group saw the quartet stretch their lead to 21 seconds over the chasing Duffy, who had dropped Taylor-Brown. Kingma, Spivey, Nina Eim, and Laura Lindemann rounded out the top 10, although they were the head of a sizable chase pack that was coming close to swallowing up the likes of Kingma and Spivey.

Derron attempted surges in pace on the front, which saw the led pack start to stretch and accordion again as the final lap began. The medals would come from this front group, as they had a 41 second lead over the next closest Duffy with a mere 2.5 kilometers left to run.

With just over a kilometer to run Beaugrand dropped the hammer. Derron and Potter attempted to chase, with Lombardi unable to respond. But that proved to be the decisive move of the race for gold. Beaugrand took victory in 1:54:55, with Derron following for silver six seconds later, and Beth Potter rounding out the podium for bronze.

Women’s Results

1. Cassandre Beaugrand 1:54:55
2. Julie Derron 1:55:01
3. Beth Potter 1:55:10
4. Emma Lombardi 1:55:16
5. Flora Duffy 1:56:12
6. Georgia Taylor-Brown 1:56:35
7. Maya Kingma 1:56:53
8. Laura Lindemann 1:57:01
9. Lisa Tertsch 1:57:03
10. Taylor Spivey 1:57:11

Images Courtesy of World Triathlon