When considering the hardest race of this year’s season, WTCS Karlovy Vary will certainly be near the top of the list, perhaps even taking top spot outright. Cobbles and climbs and cut-throat racing await. It is to this punishing course that a deep men’s field stuffed with talent has been attracted. While there will be no starting berth for Olympic champion Alex Yee, every men’s 2025 Series medallist is locked in and ready to go.
Who’s there?
Series leader Matthew Hauser is the lone Australian man on the start list. With two wins and a 2nd place already under his belt, there is only one way he can improve upon his current points tally: with a win. To do that, however, Hauser will have his work cut out.
Fresh off his dazzling comeback victory at T100 London, Hayden Wilde goes again in the WTCS. Somehow, his hunt for a double world title in 2025 is still on. Across the WTCS and T100, he has now appeared three times and come away with three gold medals. Should he bring that form to Karlovy Vary, the distance to Hauser will shrink both in terms of points and, perhaps more importantly, mentally. Tayler Reid joins Wilde as the other New Zealand representative on the start list.
WTCS Alghero winner Miguel Hidalgo is another that could upset Hauser. After all, he beat the Australian in style on a similarly brutal Alghero course. Fellow WTCS medallist Manoel Messias will start alongside him in a powerful Brazilian double punch. Moreover, Vasco Vilaca heads up a three man Portuguese team containing Ricardo Batista and Miguel Tiago Silva. A first Series win has eluded Vilaca but he has pushed Hauser and the rest closely time and time again.
On the French team, 2023 world champion Dorian Coninx and 2022 world champion Leo Bergere will sense an opportunity to return to the top of the podium. Coninx memorably won at WTCS Bermuda a few years back, arguably the only course that matches the difficulty of Karlovy Vary’s bike course. For his part, Bergere is known for his machine-like prowess on the bike, although he currently is not in top condition due to a small benign tumour on his sciatic nerve.
Team USA will be represented by four men in Karlovy Vary. Perhaps more so than any other squad, they have reason to be optimistic; they have won the past two World Cup events in the city. Their squad comprises Morgan Pearson, John Reed, Chase McQueen and Seth Rider.
WTCS medallist Csongor Lehmann starts alongside Márk Dévay (who won his first World Cup medal in Karlovy Vary) and Zsombor Dévay for Hungary. For Spain, Alberto Gonzalez Garcia starts beside Kevin Tarek Viñuela Gonzalez who also medalled at last year’s World Cup race.
Henry Graf, one of the breakout stars of 2025, heads up a German quintet containing Chris Ziehmer, Eric Diener, Valentin Wernz and Lasse Nygaard Priester. Their British rivals will send a five-man team of their own in the form of Hugo Milner, Oliver Conway, Max Stapley, Jack Willis and Harry Leleu.
A four-man team will race for Japan; this will be consist of Aoba Yasumatsu, Ren Sato, Kyotaro Yoshikawa and Ryoya Tamakazi. Among the teams with three-man continents are Switzerland (Adrien Briffod, Simon Westermann and Sylvain Fridelance), Norway (Vetle Bergsvik Thorn, Sebastian Wernersen and Eirik Berling Grande), Austria (Tjebbe Kaindl, Alois Knabl and Peter Luftensteiner) and Netherlands (Mitch Kolkman, Victor Goené and Ian Pennekamp).
Finally, the home Czech team will have their hopes carried by Tomas Zikmund and Filip Michalek.
Who’s not there?
With Alex Yee’s decision not to race in Karlovy Vary, his world title hunt is over. Of course, he has not yet made his first appearance of the 2025 Series (that will come next weekend at WTCS French Riviera) and so we do not yet know if there was ever a chance of him making a late surge to defend his crown. Even if he wins in France, though, he will not have enough races left to haul in Hauser.
Elsewhere from the Series top-20, David Cantero del Campo (ranked 6th) has opted against race, as has Luke Willian (9th). The other names to miss out are Tyler Mislawchuk, Roberto Sanchez Mantecon, Ben Dijkstra and Brandon Copeland.
Four talking points
Returning winners
While WTCS Karlovy Vary is a new race in the Series, it is not a new event and the city has hosted a World Cup since 2017. Several athletes will therefore start in September having tasted success at the venue before. Indeed, the past four winners will all be competing.
John Reed prevailed in 2024 after his teammate Morgan Pearson broke away on his own in a daring solo victory in 2023. Prior to that, Csongor Lehmann won in 2022 and Lasse Nygaard Priester triumphed in 2021. As such, there is plenty of knowledge in the field of how to win in Karlovy Vary, with each of the winners having done so in slightly different ways. The outcomea of this will therefore be a fascinating clash between recent WTCS form and historic knowledge of the course, potentially putting some big upsets on the cards.
Pedal to the mettle
More than anything else, Karlovy Vary will be a test of mettle on the bike. Hitting the same steep climbs over and over again will sap the field and will create space for the stronger cyclists to really inflict some pain on their rivals ahead of the run. The most obvious candidates to succeed on such a course are the powerhouses like Wilde and Bergere that are known for breaking clear (like they did at WTCS Torremolinos last year) and generally dominating bike groups.
Equally, Karlovy Vary could provide a stage for someone else to flourish. The likes of Kyotaro Yoshikawa, Simon Westermann, Panagiotis Bitados (GRE) and Tjebbe Kaindl each have the requisite explosiveness on two wheels to overturn the established order. Realistically, they will need to drop the likes of Wilde and Bergere in the water to negate their running advantage, but even if they should break clear with the pair still among the breakaway this group of super-cyclists could nonetheless find themselves flying to best ever WTCS finishes.
New faces
Maybe somewhat surprisingly for a post-Olympic year, the men’s 2025 campaign has not really been one in which new faces have vaulted themselves to the forefront of the Series. When it comes to the podium, Alessio Crociani (ITA) is the only first time medallist this year; by contrast, there were twice as many in the women’s Alghero race alone. Crociani will start in Karlovy Vary after he claimed a maiden medal in Hamburg. The two races could hardly be more different but the Italian’s swim speed should put him in any front pack that forms, which could open the door to a second medal.
Meanwhile, outside of Ben Dijkstra’s 8th place in Abu Dhabi, there have not been a lot of debuts that have pulled up trees. This is understandable as it is extraordinarily difficult to get a WTCS race right at the first ask. Nevertheless, in this respect, there are two new faces on the men’s start list to track.
Oliver Conway comes into his first start after a remarkable victory at the Saidia World Cup in June while Panagiotis Bitados has excelled over middle distance racing in the past 12 months and makes a long-awaited debut. It is never wise to expect too much from a debut but, given their recent form, maybe, just maybe, Conway or Bitados could be the shot of new blood that shakes up the Series.
Door open for Wilde?
We have to come back to Wilde because what he has done has simply been ludicrous. Less than 100 days separated what easily could have been a season-ending injury and a barnstorming victory at T100 London. Worryingly for the field, he is only just getting started.
Wilde is slated to take on a T100-WTCS double in the French Riviera before turning to Karlovy Vary. One point to note is that Wilde’s win in Abu Dhabi was only 750 points and so even wins in French Riviera and Karlovy Vary in this (insane) upcoming triple will leave him with a points deficit to Hauser.
On the other hand, Hauser last beat Wilde at WTCS Pontevedra in 2023 and, with Yee absent in Karlovy Vary, Wilde will be the favourite. It should not be possible, but Wilde has a clear path to the world title. Assuming he continues to regain momentum, WTCS Karlovy Vary might be the last chance to stop him.
Catch every minute of WTCS Karlovy Vary live on TriathlonLive on 14th September and check out the full men’s start lists here.