Mislawchuk and Michaličková win Supertri Toronto
Tyler Mislawchuk won at home in Toronto with the fastest run of the day. Zuzana Michaličková did the same in the women’s race and was the only woman under the hour. Supertri handed out the last places in the season finale in Jersey, worth 800,000 USD, on Sunday 26 July.
Mislawchuk breaks the field over the last 5 km
Toronto was the third and final regular-season round of the inaugural Supertri Pro Series, after Austin and Blenheim Palace. The format is a draft-legal sprint: 750 m swim, 20 km bike, 5 km run. In that kind of racing a good swim and strong riding usually are not enough, because the group comes back together anyway. So it went again. The leaders reached the second transition in a pack of several riders with effectively no time between them.
The run settled it. Mislawchuk covered 5 km in 13:12, the fastest in the men’s field, and rode away from the rest on the finishing stretch. He crossed the line in 51:27, 21 seconds ahead of Britain’s Solomon Okrafo-Smart in 51:48. France’s Nathan Grayel was third in 52:05 and his compatriot Nathan Lessmann fourth in 52:12.
Fifth went to Jonny Brownlee in 52:17, the three-time Olympic medallist. He arrived in Toronto a few weeks after his Weekend Warrior record at Supertri Blenheim Palace, where he completed 10 sprint triathlons in a single weekend. Fifth place off the back of that load says a fair amount about his condition.
| Place | Athlete | Country | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tyler Mislawchuk | CAN | 51:27 |
| 2 | Solomon Okrafo-Smart | GBR | 51:48 |
| 3 | Nathan Grayel | FRA | 52:05 |
| 4 | Nathan Lessmann | FRA | 52:12 |
| 5 | Jonny Brownlee | GBR | 52:17 |
| 6 | Tayler Reid | NZL | 52:25 |
| 7 | Darcy Williams | AUS | 52:30 |
| 8 | Léandre Binette | CAN | 52:35 |
| 9 | Cole Jamieson | USA | 53:07 |
| 10 | Oliver Turner | GBR | 53:43 |
Michaličková closes out the most consistent campaign of the season
The women’s race followed the same script and the run decided everything. Zuzana Michaličková covered 5 km in 15:52, the quickest in the field, and pulled away steadily. She finished in 59:34, the only woman under the hour.
It was her third start of this Supertri Pro Series season and comfortably her best. She had taken third in Austin and seventh at Blenheim Palace, so the curve went up round by round. Annie Fuller of the United States was second in 1:00:40 and Kira Gupta-Baltazar third in 1:01:02, to the delight of the Canadian crowd.
| Place | Athlete | Country | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zuzana Michaličková | SVK | 59:34 |
| 2 | Annie Fuller | USA | 1:00:40 |
| 3 | Kira Gupta-Baltazar | CAN | 1:01:02 |
| 4 | Mackenzie McConagha | USA | 1:01:29 |
| 5 | Dominika Jamnicky | CAN | 1:02:05 |
| 6 | Sophie Coulombe | CAN | 1:02:07 |
| 7 | Jeanne Gadbois | CAN | 1:02:35 |
| 8 | Chelsea Webber | USA | 1:02:55 |
| 9 | Maëlly Lamontagne | CAN | 1:03:23 |
| 10 | Anabelle Saindon | CAN | 1:03:31 |
The last tickets to Jersey are gone
Three athletes of each gender qualify for the final from every round. Mislawchuk and Michaličková had already qualified from earlier starts, so their wins pushed the open places one position down. The men heading to Jersey are Solomon Okrafo-Smart, Nathan Grayel and Nathan Lessmann. The women are Annie Fuller, Kira Gupta-Baltazar and Mackenzie McConagha.
The Supertri Pro Series final takes place on 6 September in Jersey. There is 800,000 USD on the table, paid down to tenth place, with 100,000 USD to the winner. The organiser calls it the richest single day in triathlon, and this season nothing beats that pot. Toronto also counted as a round of the Triathlon Canada National Development Series, so local juniors were collecting points alongside the professional field.
Why the format matters
Supertri is a different sport from a Sunday start over the olympic distance or 70.3. A short draft-legal sprint turns triathlon into contact racing. Tactics in the pack, position out of the water and power over the final kilometre are what count. Even pacing across three hours has no application here. That is what makes Mislawchuk’s run stand out: 13:12 is exactly 2:38/km, produced after a swim and a bike leg ridden in a group.
Two things follow for an age-grouper. Short-course triathlon is decided in the last minutes of the run, so a sprint build wants closing pace trained on its own, on tired legs off the bike. The second point is about the format itself. An 800,000 USD pot at one race and a field that keeps getting stronger show that draft-legal racing has stopped being a curiosity on the calendar.