Olympic Qualification for 2024 Paris Games Opens at 2022 WTCS Leeds This Weekend

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The quest for the Olympic Games Paris 2024 officially begins this weekend at the 2022 World Triathlon Championship Series Leeds, the first WTCS race of the Paris 2024 Olympic Qualification window. Nine U.S. elite triathletes will compete Saturday, June 11 in the second WTCS race of the year. 

Mixed Relay racing will also make its calendar debut on Sunday, June 12 with the 2022 World Triathlon Championship Series Leeds Mixed Relay, which will also award Olympic rankings points. 

The elite men’s race kicks off the weekend racing action at 9 a.m. ET (2 p.m. local time) on Saturday, followed by the women’s race at 10:45 a.m. ET (3:45 p.m. local time). The Mixed Relay event will take place Sunday with a start time of 12:15 p.m. ET (5:15 p.m. local time). 

All three events will be streamed live on TriathlonLIVE.tv.  

Leeds will host the first sprint-distance race of the year, with athletes taking on a fast, yet hilly 750-meter swim, 20-kilometer bike and 5k run.  

Tokyo 2020 Olympian Kevin McDowell (Geneva, Ill.) comes to Leeds off a 10th place finish at last month’s WTCS Yokohama, the best for the U.S. men. Matt McElroy (Huntington Beach, Calif.), who finished 13th in Yokohama, will also represent the U.S. men. In 2019, McElroy earned the silver medal in Leeds, becoming the first U.S. man since 2009 to medal in a World Triathlon Championship Series race.  

At last year’s WTCS Leeds, Morgan Pearson (New Vernon, N.J.) became the third U.S. man to medal in a WTCS race, earning the silver.  

Seth Rider (Germantown, Tenn.), Chase McQueen (Columbus, Ind.) and Marc Dubrick (Glen Ellyn, Ill.), who is making his WTCS debut in Leeds, round out the men’s U.S. roster.  

The fifth, sixth and seventh ranked triathletes in the World Triathlon Championship Rankings, Erika Ackerlund (Helena, Mont.), Kirsten Kasper (North Andover, Mass.) and Summer Rappaport (Thornton, Colo.) are joined by Taylor Spivey (Redondo Beach, Calif.) to form the strong U.S. women’s team.  

Spivey placed eighth at WTCS Yokohama last month and has never finished lower than seventh at Leeds, which is where she made her first World Triathlon Series podium appearance, a silver in 2017.  

Kasper finished ninth in WTCS Yokohama and Auckerlund placed 15th. Rappaport comes to Leeds making her 2022 WTCS debut. She earned 2022 WTCS points last fall by racing WTCS Hamburg and WTCS Abu Dhabi.  

Following the individual races on Saturday, two U.S. men and two U.S. women will be selected to compete for Team USA on the Mixed Relay race on Sunday, featuring the super-sprint 300m swim, 6.6K bike and 1K run teammate-tag format. 
 
For the full Leeds start lists, click here. 

USA Triathlon is pleased to provide USA Triathlon members with a discount of 20% off an annual pass for TriathlonLIVE.tv to stream all of this year’s races to cheer on Team USA! Use code NF2022 to apply the discount at checkout.