This weekend sees British triathletes and paratriathletes race in Pontevedra in Spain with the prize of becoming world champion on offer.

The three-day racing spectacular will host the final race of the 2023 World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS), World Triathlon Para Championships and World Triathlon U23 Championships, as well as Age-Group World Championships in Super Sprint, Standard and Aquabike. 

Saturday 23 September will host the paratriathlon racing, where Great Britain will be represented by Josh Landmann (PTWC), Finley Jakes (PTS4), Michael Salisbury (PTS5), Dave Ellis and his guide Luke Pollard (PTVI), Mel Nicholls (PTWC), Hannah Moore (PTS4), Claire Cashmore and Lauren Steadman (both PTS5). 

Ellis and Pollard will be looking to defend their world champion title from 2022 when Abu Dhabi hosted the World Triathlon Para Championships, whilst Cashmore will be seeking to step up from silver last year and adding to her previous world championship wins. 

Landmann will be making his world championship debut in Pontevedra whilst Moore is making her return to world championship racing in Pontevedra, with the PTS4 athlete winning gold in 2018 and 2019 and silver at this year's European Championships.  

Steadman will also be competing in her first world championships since 2019 when she took silver behind Cashmore, with the Tokyo 2020 champion looking to add to the three podium finishes she’s racked up this year. 

The U23 Championships and finale to the WTCS will take place across both days, with the male races on Saturday and female races on Sunday 24 September. 

In 2022, Kate Waugh and Connor Bentley delivered a double U23 win for Great Britain, and both will compete in the WTCS races this year. 

In their stead will be Dan Dixon, Sam Hart and Hamish Reilly, who finished third Bentley last year, and Jess Fullagar, Tilly Anema and Daisy Davies, with the former having played a starring role in GB’s mixed relay silver at AJ Bell 2023 WTCS Sunderland in July. 

Dixon, who represented Team England at last year's Commonwealth Games in Birmingham will be looking to improve on his 35th-place finish from 2022, and Hart will be racing his first triathlon world championships having previously raced at the duathlon championships in 2021. 

Davies crossed the line eighth in the 2022 U23 World Championships and raced to 31st at her first senior championships in June of this year at the European Championships in Madrid. Anema will compete in her first world championships but comes into the event having finished fifth and first respectively at the 2023 Europe Triathlon Sprint and Relay Championships in August. 

In the final WTCS race of the year, it is all to race for for Alex Yee and Beth Potter, both of whom can leave Spain as world champion. There are 1,250 points on offer for the race winner at the Championship Finals and the current standings in both the men’s and women’s series are a close run thing. 

Yee will compete on Saturday leading the series by 57 points. In second is New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde and Vasco Vilaca of Portugal is in third. The Brit has recorded three ranking wins this year at Abu Dhabi, Cagliari and the Paris Test Event. 

Potter, who will race on Sunday, similarly has three wins having also won in Paris and Abu Dhabi as well as in Montreal. She sits in second in the women’s standings 32 points behind France’s Cassandre Beaugrand who leads the way. 

Also competing alongside Potter on Sunday will be Sophie Coldwell, Kate Waugh and Olivia Mathias.  

Coldwell, the WTCS Yokohama winner has a mathematical chance of finishing on the overall podium should the results go her way having also won silver at WTCS Abu Dhabi at the start of the year and top-20 finishes at WTCS Montreal and the Paris Test Event. 

Meanwhile Waugh will line up in the WTCS race in Pontevedra having won the U23 World Championships at last year’s finals in Abu Dhabi. This year has seen her finish in the top-ten at WTCS Yokohama (fifth), European Championships (eighth) and the Paris Test Event (seventh), as well as winning silver in the Paris mixed relay. 

The final Brit in the women’s race is Mathias, who finished 12th at the European Championships in June and 23rd at AJ Bell 2023 WTCS Sunderland in July but missed the Paris Test Event through injury. 

Joining Yee on Saturday will be triple Olympic medallist Jonny Brownlee, Barclay Izzard and Max Stapley. Brownlee, the 2012 World Champion comes into the race with two back-to-back silver medals in the shorter format of Super League racing. 

Izzard has had a string of consistent results this year and recorded his best WTCS result to date when he finished eighth at AJ Bell 2023 WTCS Sunderland, as well as claiming silver in the mixed relay at that event and the Paris Test Event. 

This is Stapley’s first year competing under the British flag and was part of the relay team in Sunderland alongside Izzard, Potter and Fullagar who claimed silver on home soil. He then backed that up with an individual silver at World Triathlon Cup Yeongdo. 

As well as the elites, hundreds of British Triathlon members will head out to north west Spain to fly the flag of the Great Britain Age-Group Team. 

Pontevedra will welcome members racing in the World Triathlon Age-Group Championships in aquabike, super sprint and standard distance triathlon, hoping to add to the already impressive haul of World and European Championship medals that have already been won by the GB Age-Group Team this year.