The evolution of triathlon since its Sydney Olympic 2000 debut has turned Paris-bound medal contender Matt Hauser into both the hunter and the hunted, reports Editor at Large Louise Evans.
It may be an individual sport but if the field senses a weakness, they will hunt as a pack to bring down the fastest runners en route to the finish line.
Gone are the days when triathletes could rely on one dominant discipline to win. To finish on the podium in Paris triathletes have to be slick 1500m open water swimmers, attacking 40km bike riders and gun 10,000m runners with a killer finishing kick.
These proficient all-rounders have also worked out how to stalk the better sprinters and neutralise their finishing leg speed.
Their tactics – born of greater fitness, technique, aggression, experience and teamwork – have made Australia’s world ranked number three Matt Hauser both a lead runner and a raider.
The 26-year-old bachelor of business graduate relishes the role of raider especially if he can slow the assault of top runners including Britain’s Tokyo silver medallist Alex Yee and New Zealand’s defending Olympic bronze triathlete Hayden Wilde.
“If they are in with a sniff at the end of the bike, it’s hard to match their speed,” Hauser said. “But the strong swim/bikers – myself and few others – have been able to garner the lead from the good runners, make the breakaway on the bike stick, and go into the run with a gap back to them. Their run can be exploited and we have proven that.
“The most powerful thing is to have everyone motivated. That’s where the race dynamics can change. If the front guys are committed to pushing into that red zone to gain a 10-15 second lead on the bike, it can prove damaging to the guys behind. It is a recipe for success. That’s how they’ve been derailed in the past. If everyone is working together and motivated.”
Hauser is also a natural front runner who grew up competing in track and field and cross country at Xavier College in Queensland’s Hervey Bay. “I had a passion for running, I was always challenging but not at the top,” he said. “When you are running well and feeling fit there is no better feeling. I love that runner’s high.”
Triathlon “found him” when he was asked to do the run leg in a triathlon relay as a teenager. “I got hooked, I liked the variety and the challenge of mastering three sports in one. It was new and exciting and different. I’ve been doing it ever since.”
He joined the Hervey Bay Triathlon Club and started training with a squad of Games-focused swimmers. He gave up on a career in AFL, despite being selected in the Brisbane Lions Talent Academy, after two concussions and the risk of brain trauma caused a rethink.
When he finished school he was selected to join the national triathlon academy on the Gold Coast. He moved to there aged 17 and enrolled in Griffith University studying a degree in business and marketing. The major life shift paid off when he became the 2017 world junior triathlon champion.
Today Hauser’s best time for an Olympic triathlon 10,000m run leg – that is after already having completed an energy-sapping 1,500m swim and a leg-numbing 40km bike – is 29min28sec. That time would have placed him in the national 10,000m final at the championships held in Melbourne in December.
But while he’s fast enough to be a national-level 10km runner, his combined swim/bike/run legs are fast enough to be number three in the triathlon world.
“I pride myself on being able to lead in any leg and to have the ability to be up the front and be in a position to win,” he said.
Hauser set his sights on a podium finish in Paris after what was his worst race – sadly at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Everything that could go wrong did.
“We’d been starved of international competition for 18 months with the Covid lock downs,” he said. “Because of the water quality they had to put up purifying barriers in Tokyo Bay which increased the water temperature two-to-three degrees. We were swimming in 32-degree soup.
“It was choppy, everyone who went out hard at the start blew up because of the water temperature. It condensed the field. It was a bust. I felt like I was just making up the numbers.” Hauser finished 24th. He was gutted.
Going home to quarantine and more Covid lockdowns gave him time to mourn the loss and process what happened in Tokyo “to get the anger and frustration and confusion out of the way”.
“I came back full bore,” he said. “Tokyo became the driving force for my Paris campaign. I needed to step it up. Let’s not get left behind. Let’s go. The next year I had some of the best results of my career.”
Last year Hauser finished second behind NZ’s Hayden Wilde at the World Triathlon Championship Series in Yokohama in May and then he won in Montreal a month later.
A month ago he was on the podium again back at Yokohama, finishing second and, significantly, leading fellow Australian Luke Willian into third.
For the first time since triathlon debuted in Sydney 2000 Australia has a male triathlete in medal contention plus the chance of a relay medal.
It’s no secret that the women have been carrying the flag for Australia in Olympic triathlon. The medal hit list reads like this: Sydney 2000 Michellie Jones silver; Athens 2004 Loretta Harrop silver; Beijing 2008 Emma Snowsill gold and Emma Moffatt bronze; London 2012 Erin Densham bronze.
“The boys have to step up,” Hauser said. “It’s about time, the girls have carried us for long enough. We’re in a position where myself and Luke Willian podiumed at a recent world championship series race. It isn’t out of reach. It is a real possibility. We’re going to do our best for our country and we’ll be after the medals.”
Hauser is not daunted by the Paris triathlon course which includes running and cycling along the Champs Elysee and swimming in the Seine.
He’s comforted by the 1.4 billion Euro ($A2.25 billion) being spent on the Olympic legacy project to clean up the famed river that flows through the heart of Paris.
Swimming in the Seine had been banned for over a century because of high levels of pollution and the presence of E.coli and Enterococcus – both indicators of sewerage in the water.
But a new sewerage solution courtesy of a huge billion Euro plus underground reservoir has been built to prevent contaminated stormwater flowing into the Seine.
After his hot soup Tokyo Olympic experience, Hauser applauds the Parisians for saying adieu to the poo. Temperature testing shows that during the Games dates last year the water temperature in the Seine was 19-22 degrees.
“Paris will be epic,” he said. “It’s so exciting to be part of a showcase sport. We’re not stuck inside a stadium. We’ll be out racing under the Eiffel Tower and along the Champs Elysse. Such a spectacle. It’s the Olympics, we’ve come too far to be stopped by a little bit of sewerage.
“I feel like the stars are aligning but that isn’t down to chance. It is what I have been working at for the last three years or so since Tokyo. These opportunities don’t come around often. Everything points to me being in the best shape of my career. I don’t want to waste that. It’s a driving factor. I’m out to put all that into practice.”
Hauser knows exactly how he’ll be feeling in the final run with 2km to the finish line. If everything has gone to plan he’ll have the measure of triathlon’s big five Games hunters – Léo Bergere France; Hayden Wilde NZ; Alex Yee UK; Vasco Vilaca Portugal and USA contender Morgan Pearson.
“At 8km there’s a lot of questions going through your head … ‘am I hurting too much’ … ‘who else is hurting’ … ‘can I finish this off’.
“I’ll be feeling fatigue, pressure. But I’ll be trusting myself and trusting my kick. I’ll be acting on gut instinct, acting in the moment and when it’s time – going for it.
“A medal would mean the world to me. I’ve made it my mission since Tokyo to be the next man up. I want to fly the flag and create a new generation of Australian triathletes who can compete with the best in the world. I really want to strive for a medal and I know that on my day I am capable of that.”
Louise Evans is an award-winning journalist who has worked around Australia and the world as a reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and media executive for media platforms including The Sydney Morning Herald (eight years), The Australian (11 years) and Australian Associated Press (six years in London, Beijing and Sydney).
A women sports’ pioneer, Louise was the first female sports journalist employed by The Sydney Morning Herald and the first female sports editor at The Australian. Louise went on to work at six Olympic Games, six Commonwealth Games and numerous world sporting championships and grand slam tennis events.
Louise is the Founding Editor of AAP FactCheck, the Creator of #WISPAA – Women in Sport Photo Action Awards and national touring Exhibition and the author and producer of the Passage to Pusan book, documentary and exhibition.
In 2019 she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) Queen’s Honour for services to the media and sport and named an Australian Financial Review Top 100 Woman of Influence for services to the arts, culture and sport.
In 2020 she won a NSW Volunteer of the Year Award plus the NSW Government Community Service Award for her women-in-sport advocacy work.
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