Macca's Predictions: RBC Super League Jersey

It takes a brave person to predict the outcome of a Super League race.

Super League has taken the triathlon world by storm precisely because it is short, sharp, entertaining and very hard to call.

So, where to go to find somebody brave enough to stick their neck on the line and call it before the even gun goes off in RBC Super League Triathlon Jersey 2019?

We asked Super League co-founder Chris McCormack, the four–time triathlon World Champion, for his selections.

Katie Zaferes

Katie is the gold standard of the sport at the moment.

Her dominance in Super League last season was followed by a show of incredible consistency to capture her first World title in Switzerland.

Katie’s ability to use her strength to maintain and increase pace during the formats and apply so much pressure to the front of the race is such that she runs all her competitors off the podium.

She has no weaknesses as an athlete, and her ‘screw tightening’ racing style, where she just continues to increase the pressure, has been something no other woman has been able to deal with.

The slight changes to the run course this year, with the additional dead turn and the two 90-degree bends, may inhibit her ability to find that devastating rhythm she looks for in her racing, but never write her off.

It is going to take a monumental race from the world’s best women to dislodge Katie. She is toughness personified.

Cassandre Beaugrand

The young French athlete races on mood.

She has such a massive raw ability, especially at these hyper sprint distances, and is flawless in the water and on foot.

She won the first race of the first Super League Triathlon event she ever did, and a devastating sprint against Katie Zaferes in the Final in Singapore.

Her strength is her speed, as well as her years of development under the French high-performance structure that has focused on refining the technical aspects that are so important in Super League racing.

If she is in the mood to win this race, she has all the cards to do it. A star of the future.

Georgia Taylor-Brown

The British women boast some of the greatest depth in the sport at the moment, and Taylor-Brown has moved herself right up the ranks to be the top two in the country, which is now the same as the top three in the world.

Her progression through the triathlon ranks in the last four years has been the standout of the circuit.

She is flawless in her strengths in the sport and has positioned herself as a true gold medal racer at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, and one of the few athletes that has the racing ability, wit and strength to potentially match Katie Zaferes over these Super League formats.

The dynamic, technical racing, and the super tight course circuits that Super League delivers, which are very different than the open road WTS events, will suit her skills and allow her to better utilise her strengths to win.

One of the athletes to watch in the Series and most certainly capable of grabbing the pink jersey after Round one.

Taylor Spivey

The pocket dynamo from California earned herself a Wildcard start last year in Super League Malta and immediately delivered with a standout swim performance, dominating the ITT and progressing through the rest of the Series to almost finish on the podium – even given that she missed an entire race.

Like most of the athletes who raced Super League, she took this speed and the refined skills that it brings and had the best WTS season of her career, ending ranked number four in the world and a main player in all the races she does.

Her strength as an athlete is her tactical racing head, and with her partner being Vincent Luis who is probably the smartest racer on the circuit, you can see her course preparation is spot on at every event in which she competes.

She has won on the Super League circuit before and has the courage to escape and go for it.

It is this mindset and her skills as an athlete that have me put her right in contention to win again this season.

Rachel Klamer

One of the most popular athletes on the circuit from a peer and fan perspective, she is one athlete who is never far from the pointy end of the race and can be an opportunist in her race execution.

Finishing second last year in the Super League Championship Series it was consistency that kept her on the podium and then a perfectly executed Final to push the other athletes convincingly off that second place chase.

A woman who has the experience to win, the strength to be at the front, and the actual skills on course, especially on the bike, to exploit the weaknesses of her racing peers, expect to see Rachel right up the front.

She is a rhythm racer, and can get isolated at times with the fast paces out of transition in bike and run that are not seen on the longer and slower WTS circuit, but when she finds that rhythm she is faster than anyone in the race on her day.