Supertri Toronto 2025 women's results: Jolien Vermeylen stuns big guns for famous DEBUT win

Belgium’s Jolien Vermeylen produced a brilliant performance to see off Olympic champion Cassandre Beaugrand and the rest for a famous victory on her Supertri debut in Toronto.

The 2025 Supertri League season kicked off in sensational style in Canada as Vermeylen gave Brownlee Racing and their new manager Tim Don the perfect start to the new campaign.

Vermeylen, on her Supertri debut, was to the fore throughout but she had to withstand strong challenges from French duo Beaugrand and Léonie Périault.

It was the Eliminator format, which meant two athletes went out after each of the first two stages.

Here’s how it all unfolded…

Stage 1 – Statement start from Brownlee Racing

It was the Brownlee Racing athletes who were to the fore on the opening swim – they’d started on the far left of the pontoon as team boss Tim Don made a typically assured start.

Defending champs Crown Racing in contrast really suffered – Emma Jeffcoat was best of that quartet in fifth. But her teammates, including Beaugrand and Georgia Taylor-Brown, were all outside the top 10.

Coming out of the water it was Tilly Anema and Liv Mathias in a one-two for Brownlee and the first short chute bagged.

It was mandatory shoes on heading to T1 due to wet, wooden stairs and early on the bike Nina Eim (Stars & Stripes) crashed and her hopes went up in smoke with that given the last two athletes at the end of the run would be eliminated.

Brownlee Racing were still dominating up front – Jess Fullagar, Mathias and Vermeylen were all to the fore and gave them a clean sweep of the short chutes thanks to Fullagar on the bike and Vermeylen on the run.

They could only use one – but were denying the other teams – and Don would make the tricky choice of giving it to Vermeylen who was continuing the fine form she showed at WTCS Hamburg. What a decision that would prove to be.

Eliminated – Sophie Alden and Nine Eim

Stage 2 – Beaugrand bounces back

After a six-minute break we had a near action replay in the swim in the sense that Anema was again out on her own up front, with Mathias just behind.

However Crown Racing were now creeping much closer – Beaugrand, Jeffcoat and GTB were third, fourth and fifth, with Vermeylen sixth.

Beaugrand was brilliant in transition and that meant she started the bike first and continued the good work into the run as she led home a French one-two-three ahead of Périault and Emma Lombardi.

Eliminated: Zuzana Michalickova and Emma Jeffcoat

Stage 3 – Incredible finish

Game on then and when the times were added up it was Périault for Podium Racing who started first in the third and final leg – in pursuit format.

Vermeylen, with the short chute to come, was second at +3s and Beaugrand was at +14s in third.

But the Olympic champion bossed the swim and by the time they exited the water, she was in pole position.

It all come back together late on the bike and it was Taylor-Brown, in just her second triathlon of the year, who was first into transition.

But there was then nothing between a group of eight – GTB, Fullagar, Vermeylen, Lombardi, Mathias, Périault, Jeanne Lehair and Beaugrand in eighth after a slow transition.

Onto the run though and no surprise at all to see Beaugrand go from eighth to first in 400 metres!

It was a super-confident display – though she later admitted she thought it was a 1km run rather than 2km – and the complexion then completely changed. Also partly because of the short chute for Vermeylen which brought her back onto Beaugrand’s shoulder but there was no denying what happened next.

For she kicked clear of first Beaugrand and then withstood a strong challenge from Périault for an incredible win on debut.