Olympic and World Champion Cassandre Beaugrand crashed out of WTCS Yokohama after a miserable day on the bike.
The French superstar enjoyed the perfect year in 2024, culminating with that memorable victory in front of home fans in Paris before she went on to take the world title in Torremolinos.
And this season started in blistering style – she set a new national record of 14:53 for 5k on the road before winning both the Supertri E World Championships in London and the T1 Indoor Triathlon World Cup in Lievin.
But Yokohama was her first WTCS race of the new campaign – and things went wrong from the start.
Struggle from the start
A puncture on the bike in warm up was a first minor setback and the swim, normally a huge strength, saw her lose a little ground on the front group.
But it was on the bike – in heavy rain throughout, which resulted in an amended course – where her struggles really started.
She never looked happy and soon dropped off the chase group.
However things would all come back together and we then had a huge lead group of 32 athletes.
But Beaugrand was in 32nd place and having to work to stay in touch.
Race over
And on the sixth of what were now 10 laps of 3.7km, she lost control of the bike coming out of a corner in the slippery conditions and hit the tarmac.
Officials were soon on hand to help her to her feet but she never looked like rejoining the race and the confirmation of the DNF came soon after.
Thankfully she was the only one of those leading 32 athletes to see her race end early in the testing conditions and Luxembourg’s Jeanne Lehair would go on to take a first ever WTCS win.
Writing later on her Instagram page, Beaugrand said: “Had zero energy from the start, totally drained, lost focus and hit the ground.”
“Luckily nothing broken,” she added, alongside a picture of some nasty road rash on her right arm.
But having missed Abu Dhabi in February, it all means Beaugrand now faces a race against time to be fit for the third WTCS race of the season at Alghero which is in a fortnight’s time.
