Brown Soldiers Through
Joanna Brown was the only one of the four elite athletes competing at the Grand Final to make it to the finish line, but that was no easy feat for the Carp, Ont., native.
Brown would eventually finish 34th after injuring her toe coming out of the water. She found herself in the second chase group over the challenging 40-km bike, then made it through the run despite the toe issues and another cut she sustained on her leg out on the bike course.
While Brown wasn’t in the mix for a podium finish, the day featured some dramatic racing at the front.
After starting the WTS season with a bang thanks to wins in Abu Dhabi, Bermuda, Yokohama and Montreal, along with a second in Leeds, things became a bit more challenging for American Katie Zaferes in July. A crash in Hamburg saw her finish way back in 35th, then another crash at the Tokyo Test Event put her out of that race.
She put those tough memories aside, though, to take her first Grand Final and first WTS world title thanks to a huge sprint to the line in Lausanne. This put an exclamation point on her impressive season and set her up as the woman to beat in Tokyo next year.
Great Britain’s Jessica Learmonth led the way out of the water, setting up a breakaway group that included Zaferes and her countrywomen Taylor Spivey and Summer Rappaport, Georgia Taylor-Brown, Sophie Coldwell and Bermuda’s Flora Duffy.
That group managed to stay away from the chase pack that was hauled around the course by Switzerland’s Nicola Spirig, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist and 2016 silver medalist. Duffy and Zaferes drove the lead pack for much of the way, and they managed to drop all but Taylor-Brown, Learmonth and Brazil’s Vittoria Lopez by the time the group hit T2. Once on the run, it quickly became a three-woman race for the win as Learmonth, TaylorBrown and Zaferes pulled clear.
Taylor-Brown got dropped with about one km to go, setting up a dramatic sprint over the final 200 m between Zaferes and Learmonth, which the American took. Zaferes not only took the day, her win ensured she took the WTS world title as well. Learmonth and Taylor-Brown finished second and third, and were also second and third in the world standings.