Hayden Wilde said he briefly feared a Jonny Brownlee-esque Cozumel collapse as he tried to hang on for the gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
The Kiwi had taken the race by the scruff of its neck when he powered clear on the run in the French capital but his reserves hit empty in the final kilometre as his great rival Alex Yee cut down the deficit and surged past.
And talking in fascinating detail about what unfolded in Paris on supertri’s ‘Face to Face’ series with Adam Leitch, which is embedded below, Wilde also explained why the switch in start time potentially proved so crucial in what is a race that is already etched into triathlon folklore.
The only ‘flaw’ in the plan
Rightly proud of his silver – a step up from bronze in Tokyo – and while in no way bitter about what unfolded, Wilde’s words do illustrate the difficult position all athletes were put in thanks to the ongoing concerns over water quality in the River Seine.
That led to the men’s race being postponed on the Tuesday just four hours before it should have started at 8am local time.
And then rather than taking place at the same time on the nominated reserve day, it instead was rescheduled for 10:45 the following day, after the women’s race and in what proved searing temperatures.
Wilde explained: “I look back at the race and I am proud of the way I raced, proud of the way I executed the race, the preparation, everything – I did all I could.
“The preparation, as I said, was perfect and the race tactic that we went for is what we wanted [to do] and was going very, very well.
“We were prepared for the change of date, which was absolutely fine, but it was more so the change of time, which we weren’t prepared for. And the extreme weather that happened on that day, we didn’t do any heat training. That was the only flaw I think we had in the plan.”
Derailed by the heat
Wilde revealed the lengths he’d gone to – and the sacrifices made – in the weeks and months leading into Paris.
He said: “The last three months before that race, I was in altitude training by myself, and I was getting up every single day at 5:45 just to get used to that. Getting up, warming up at 7:30, then starting my workout at 8:00 to make sure that my body was dialled for that time.
“And then it got changed. I was still training between 8:00 and midday so it was absolutely fine, but it was just the heat that I feel derailed me a little bit.”
Wilde had carefully regulated his pace on the 10k run, carrying his watch in his hand, with Yee taking an early lead before the Kiwi eased to the front and opened up a 15-seconds gap.
He added: “The third lap (of four) was my most reserved lap. I really wanted reserves because I knew I had to pull a big last lap. So I actually relaxed a little bit into that, that third lap, running 3:05/km or something like that.
“I was doing some calculations in my head – if I run a 3:00/km pace, I’ll be fine. I know that Alex will have to close in 2:55/km or 2:50 and the way the heat was going, it was going to be like, yeah, fair play if he caught me at that pace.”
Brothers in arms
But things would change dramatically on the last lap and for a moment or two Wilde wondered if he would even make it to the finish line as he recalled that ‘brothers in arms’ moment when triathlon make headlines around the world – with Alistair Brownlee almost carrying brother Jonny to the finish line in Cozumel after he was overcome by the heat and humidity.
That was in 2016, just a month after the pair took gold and silver respectively at the Rio Olympics.
Fast forward eight years to Paris and Wilde added: “Coming to that last lap, I tried to get the pace up and my body just didn’t respond at all. And at that point, I was now fighting to actually get to the finish line.
“I started to see 3:10/km. That last 1,500m I started to see 3:23, 3: 30, I was definitely in trouble and I didn’t want to look back.
“And then I saw him and I tried to accelerate, but I was just done. My finish line was at nine-and-a-half k – that’s all I had.
When he passed, I tried to go, but I just had absolutely nothing, I was just completely depleted.
“And, yeah, I think at the end of the day, that’s how you want to finish a race. You want to know that you gave it everything.
“[But] if I pushed even more, I felt like I might have gone into maybe like a Johnny Brownlee in the Cozumel Grand Final, and didn’t even know if I would be able to finish. So there was a point of, do I risk putting my body on the absolute line and, you know, depleting myself and collapsing 200 metres before the line? Or do I just say no, that’s all I’ve got.
“And I think it was the right decision or I could have lost everything in one blink. I gave it absolutely everything and I’ll never kind of die not knowing I tried.”
And the great news for all triathlon fans is that Wilde and Yee will lock horns again at supertri London on Sunday, with everything to play for after one win for each of them in the series so far.
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