Freshly minted world champion Matthew Hauser will headline the Noosa Triathlon after a scheduling squeeze ended Ashleigh Gentle’s decade-long event stranglehold.
Queenslander Hauser stormed to gold in this month’s series final in Wollongong to emphatically end Australia’s 15-year world championship drought.
On Sunday, the 27-year-old will perform a 1.5km swim, 40km cycle and 10km victory lap at the 42nd Noosa staging that will be missing the event’s long-time dominator.
Gentle, 34, has won the past 10 Noosa Triathlons and 11 of the past 12.
But a move last year to middle-distance racing has flipped her schedule and thwarted her ability to extend one of Australian sport’s greatest winning streaks.
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Now racing on the lucrative T100 Triathlon World Tour, Gentle was second over the half-ironman distance in Wollongong two weeks ago.
The Brisbane native won the French Riviera leg in August and sits third with two races remaining – in Dubai on November 13 and Qatar a month later.
T100 race victories carry a $US25,000 prize, while the overall champion pockets a further $200,000.
Gentle’s 11th Noosa triumph 12 months ago – her only Australian appearance in 2024 – was only possible when one T100 leg was scrapped and she chose to skip another.
Second to Gentle last year, Richelle Hill will fancy her chances of a maiden title after clinching the under-23 world championship in a Wollongong sprint finish a fortnight ago.
But France’s reigning Olympic champion Cassandre Beaugrand will assume favouritism, keen to rebound after her world championship bid slipped away when she failed to finish in Wollongong.
Defending champion Brayden Mercer, former winners and Australian Olympians Luke Willian and Aaron Royle, and Argentina’s Valentino Agnelli will keep Hauser honest.
Hauser has only competed once in Noosa, finishing second to New Zealander Hayden Wilde in 2023 as both men beat the course record.
“I’m looking forward to trying to get back and try to knock my teammates off the podium,” Hauser said.
“Brayden Mercer winning it last year was great, I was actually able to watch that race and be on the sidelines and cheer him home.
“There’s been a bit of intra-squad banter about the race, so it’ll be good to go up against the defending champ and try and give him a run for his money.
“Seeing Courtney Atkinson and Aaron Royle and Craig Walton and the likes of those names win titles and multiple titles in the past really does motivate me to write a bit of my own history there in Noosa.”
Noosa’s five-day multi-sport festival includes Friday’s 1km ocean swim, Saturday’s 5km Bolt and Australian Open Criterium, before the largest Olympic-distance triathlon in the world on Sunday morning.
