McCullough and Orie Win World Cup Asunción

A week after Copacabana the World Triathlon Cup circus landed in Paraguay. Asunción, a debutant on the calendar, got the country’s first World Cup, and it delivered to the final metres straight away.

Men: McCullough finishes his comeback with a win

Dylan McCullough covered the olympic distance in Asunción in 1:42:41. He beat Germany’s Justus Töpper into second by 9 seconds, and third-placed Australian Toby Powers finished 34 seconds down on the winner. For Powers, a junior world championship medallist from 2022, it was a first World Cup podium.

For the triathlete from Auckland it means more than another medal. Injury took his whole 2025 season, and a week earlier in Rio he was second. In Asunción he stood on the top step for the first time since that injury.

McCullough already holds gold from the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, where he won New Zealand’s first medal of those Games.

Poland’s Kuba Gajda finished eighth.

Women: Orie wins, but Rio kept coming back on course

The women’s race went to American Danielle Orie in 1:56:04. It is her first World Cup victory.

Italy’s Angelica Prestia took second, just 8 seconds behind her, and her compatriot Beatrice Mallozzi closed out the podium 17 seconds down. Slovenia’s Tjaša Vrtačič was fourth, Slovakia’s Zuzana Michaličková fifth.

Orie is a former NCAA runner from the University of Wisconsin. She took her first World Cup medal in Saidia in 2025, in only her third start at this level.

The real story before the start was the rematch from Copacabana. A week earlier in Rio the win went to Michaličková, the first World Cup medal in history for a Slovak woman triathlete. Mallozzi was third that day.

In Asunción the roles reversed. Michaličková dropped to fifth and Mallozzi moved up onto the podium, this time on a completely different course: from a beach in Rio to a lake in Paraguay.

New course, the same ruthless format

The Asunción debut meant nobody in the field knew the course from earlier starts. The swim was two 750 m laps in the lake, from a pontoon start. The bike was six flat loops for 40 km, a layout that rewards riding in a big group rather than attacking on climbs. The run closed with four laps of 2.35 km plus a final 600 m to make the full 10 km.

A flat, fast profile meant positioning and finishing speed decided the result, not elevation. That is why form from Rio counted for so much. Anyone who ran strongly a week earlier arrived in Paraguay with a real advantage.

Vrtačič’s fourth place is her best World Cup result. The Slovenian rides in the Team World Triathlon development programme, which backs athletes from federations outside the world’s top tier on the road to Los Angeles 2028.