After a couple of postponements and disruptions over the poor quality of water in the Seine River for the swimming section of the competitions, Cassandre Beaugrand of France and Alex Yee of Great Britain won the women’s and men’s Triathlon titles in the 33rd Olympic Games here on Wednesday.
Both came up with brilliant tactical races to emerge winners in their respective events — Beaugrand winning the first gold for France in the Triathlon.
World No.1 Beaugrand ran a beautifully tactical race to finish first with an overall timing of 1:54:55, finishing ahead of Julie Derron of Switzerland, who clocked 1:55:01. Great Britain’s Beth Potter took the bronze medal with a timing of 1:55:10.
In the men’s section, Alex Yee was trailing New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde before making a late surge in the men’s section of the event, a grueling mix of stamina and speed that involves 1.5 km swimming, 40km cycling and 10km running.
The Triathlon competitions at the Paris Olympics were finally held on Wednesday after the organisers found the water too poor to conduct the event on Tuesday. Both the races were postponed by 24 hours because the water quality in River Seine was tested too poor and had human feces, E-coli and other bacteria in higher quantities than permissible.
Thus, the women’s race was held on Wednesday morning followed by the men’s after the authorities found the water quality acceptable following tests at 3 am.
With her home crowd roaring her on, the Tokyo 2020 mixed relay bronze medallist Beaugrand sailed through the finish line and immediately collapsed in exhaustion, as did Derron in second and Potter in third.
Beaugrand’s gold is the first for France in the Olympic triathlon. Potter, who competed in the 10,000m at Rio 2016, also becomes the first athlete to compete in both sports in Olympic history.
In the men’s race, Yee was 15 seconds back with a few hundred meters to go, dropped the hammer, and went on to the shoulder of his friend and competitor Wilde, before surging past to claim gold by six seconds.
Yee became the first athlete to win the individual and mixed relay triathlon event at the Games.
For Hayden Wilde of New Zealand, it’s a tremendous silver after he claimed bronze in Tokyo. On Wednesday, he just didn’t have enough left in the tank in the last stretch to stick with Yee. Leo Bergere (FRA), in third, took the first individual medal in the Men’s Triathlon for France.