TRIATHLON – Bahrain Victorious 13 superstar Georgia Taylor-Brown renews her title fight with Julie Derron in the T100 Race to Qatar as the pair meet tomorrow at Al Mamzar in Dubai in the last race that counts before next month’s World Championship Final.
Taylor-Brown, Britain’s most decorated female Olympic triathlete, is on 61 points on the T100 season standings – three behind Derron, the defending Dubai champion and Paris 2024 Olympic silver medallist, heading into this weekend’s event.
Switzerland’s Imogen Simmonds sits between them on 62 but is not racing in Dubai, so her total stands going into Qatar.
Both Derron and Taylor-Brown have raced twice this season, with Dubai giving each a third counting score.
Only an athlete’s best three T100 results count towards the title, along with the Qatar final, where the winner takes 55 points rather than the usual 35.
Taylor-Brown, fourth in Dubai last year, has added a World Triathlon Championship Series win in Karlovy Vary to her T100 victory this season in Pamplona, Spain last May.
“I’m definitely thinking about the result here,” she said.
“It would be nice to lead into the Grand Final, or at least be a little bit closer, because there’s a few points between me and Julie, so I would like to slim that down a little bit and be at least closer to her, if not in front of her.”
“I’m hoping it’s going to be very tight and close between me and Julie. I’ll definitely be battling it out to the very end.”
Derron finished third in the T100 series in 2024 and runner-up last year.
She arrives from the busiest autumn of her career, finishing second at the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Nice in September and third on her Ironman World Championship debut in Kona in October.
“I seem to just enjoy being here and seem to manage a good form in November,” said Derron. “I can’t really say why the racing here suits me.”
“I’m actually not going into this race wanting to score as well as I can to go into Qatar as series leader. Obviously, I want to do well, but I see this race as an individual race. I do this one, I check it off, and then I look towards the next one.”
“I can’t control where Georgia ends up. So obviously, if I beat her, that’s an advantage for me, but if she beats me, that’s good for her. So, I think it will be exciting until the end of the year, for sure.”
Reigning T100 world champion Kate Waugh missed the first two women’s races of the season with a calf injury.
She returned with second behind Derron in Vancouver last August. Taylor-Brown expects her to be a factor on Saturday.
“For Kate, she has nothing to lose, and sometimes that’s the best position to be in,” she said.
“She always swims well. She’ll push the bike and she’ll ride well, so she’s someone that I will attempt to follow.”
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