Hayden Wilde's coach: 'He was just like a total machine'

A renowned coach, whose stable of runners has included British greats Paula Radcliffe and Sir Mo Farah, says Kiwi triathlete Hayden Wilde still has a lot of untapped potential.

Wilde will aim to achieve what some seemed impossible by claiming the T100 title in Qatar this weekend, after a horrific accident in May.

Gary Lough is one third of the world-class coaching team that Wilde assembled at the end of last year when he decided to take a break from the Olympic distance and the World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS).

Wilde added a silver medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics to the bronze he won in Tokyo and also finished the year as the No 1 ranked male triathlete.

But Wilde has focused on longer-distance events this year in an effort to refresh himself for another tilt at an Olympic gold medal and has dominated this year's T100 Triathlon World Tour.

Lough represented Great Britain in middle-distance running in the mid-1990s before a knee injury curtailed his career and instead started coaching his wife, Paula Radcliffe.

She won marathon gold at the 2005 World Athletics Championships, represented Great Britain at four Olympics, and set a women's world record at the 2003 London Marathon, which stood for 16 years.

Sir Mo Farah became Britain's most successful track athlete with his haul of four Olympic gold medals in the 5000m and 10,000m at the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics, plus multiple World Championship titles.

Lough began coaching Farah later in his career as he started focusing more heavily on marathon running and had great success.

At the end of 2024 Wilde parted ways with New Zealand coach Craig Kirkwood after eight years together.

Lough was approached by someone from Wilde's team last year.

"I was aware of him, I'm interested in triathlon but I've never been involved with triathlon before. I'd watched him last year, primarily Olympics and WTCS stuff," Lough said.

At first Lough didn't really know what to think.

"When you see someone at a high level you sort of have to question why. I don't coach that many people. I said it would be a good idea for us to meet because unless I get on with someone and I kind of gel with them, especially when a lot of stuff we have to do is remote, I feel like it would be very difficult."

The pair ended up meeting and Lough said he liked him straight away.

"He's a super cool guy, I could tell from just the way he was talking he was a hard worker, he got me to understand some of his performance stuff and got me thinking where we can actually take this."

Wilde's super charged coaching team

Lough has had just under a year coaching Wilde, who has covered all his bases with the trio of coaches he has enlisted.

His cycling coach is Spaniard Javier Sola, a performance coach at UAE Team Emirates, whose star rider is three-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar.

He also has renowned French swimming coach Fred Vergnoux in his corner. Vergnoux coaches Canadian sensation Summer McIntosh, who won three gold medals at the Paris 2024 Olympics. McIntosh credited Vergnoux for helping her set three world records earlier this year.

The four have never actually been in the same room together.

"We spend a lot of time looking at each other's faces on screens and we all have an app on our phones, where we can essentially put the pieces of the jigsaw down and then we put them all together to see what the week looks like.

"There was a plan at one point for us three coaches to have a training camp with Hayden in Spain where Javier is based but it didn't quite work out. I have been with Fred a few times on training camps and we've met at different competitions but I've only ever spoken to Javier over the phone or online.

"It's an interesting collaboration but one which I think has worked super well considering a lot of the challenges that have been thrown at us this year."

Lough lives in Monaco, less than an hour's drive from where Vergnoux is based in France. Wilde is in Andorra, which is sandwiched between France and Spain. The Kiwi is about an hour's drive away from the main altitude training centre in France, where Vergnoux regularly takes his swimmers and Lough takes his runners.

Career threatening injuries

Lough was with Wilde in May when he ran a personal best 10km in Tokyo and flew out the next day just before the Kiwi suffered severe injuries when he had a bike crash.

"I get off my flight, I open up my phone to messages, images of MRI scans, X-rays, crazy crazy stuff."

Wilde broke several ribs, had a broken scapula, and a punctured lung after crashing into the back of a truck while on a training ride in Tokyo. Getting Wilde cleared for an emergency medical flight to Belgium so he could get shoulder surgery in a timely manner was the first priority.

"At the time and I think from the outside most people's thought process was if he made it back for the last couple of T100 races of the year then he'd be doing super well. But we saw everyday the little incremental improvements to what he was able to do after such a short period of time."

The 28-year-old's season had started brilliantly when he won the opening T100 race in Singapore but he missed the next two rounds while rehabilitating.

Just three months later it was remarkable enough that Wilde made it on the start line for the T100 series race in London, let alone win it.

"We had been in the Pyrenees and we did a specific bike-run workout and it was obvious from that we knew where he was at so it wasn't a surprise that he won London. But he was just like a total machine to do everything and anything that he could do to further his progress with the recovery."

Wilde then won the next three races. His perfect record in T100 events ended in Dubai last month, after an extra-lap mix-up caught a few competitors out, and saw him finish 8th.

"He essentially would have been undefeated until now if he hadn't made the mistake on the bike in Dubai but he's done super well. It's just a testament to him and the dedication he's put in to his recovery.

"It's been super challenging, still major restrictions with what he has in terms of his ability to swim. There's a lot more rehab, a lot more stuff to be done to get him back to the swim level he needs to be at for the Olympic distance triathlon."

A high ceiling

Lough said Wilde had made certain gains since switching distances this year. He believes he's unlocked a different kind of potential on the bike and said Wilde's running regime was very different to what he's done before.

"We've increased things quite a bit, increased the amount of running he does per week, and increased the intensity."

Lough said Wilde had a high ceiling.

"He's very capable, if we put him in a half marathon on the road, he'd run super well. He hasn't really had to kind of show what he's capable of, he's usually been so far away in the run in the T100."

Lough's current group of distance runners includes Belgian marathon star Bashir Abdi, who has won Olympic silver and bronze medals, and Swedish Olympian Suldan Hassan.

Wilde has had training sessions with Lough's runners. In July the New Zealander had track sessions with Abdi and Hassan, and Sir Mo Farah joined in.

"I've got my running group which includes athletes who are running low two hours for the marathon, setting European records, Olympic medallists. Sometimes Hayden has jumped off the bike and he's jumped in with them and they're looking at me and they're thinking 'how is this boy able to keep going for another hour after being on the bike?'

"So he's got a lot of untapped potential but I'm super happy with where we've taken it in the first year and I'm excited to see where we can take it in the next couple of years."

The Olympic challenge

Wilde's plan is to switch back to the shorter Olympic triathlon distance in the lead up to LA28.

Lough said while the longer distances Wilde is doing now will help with his general conditioning, switching back will present challenges.

"I also think the shorter distance has changed, even since probably Paris last year, people have stepped up, Matt Hauser for instance from Australia.

"Those top triathletes are kind of being a bit more specific. There was a tendency to have a little bit of generic coaching, everybody did everything but now I think athletes are looking at run coaches, swim coaches etc.

"It's a lot easier to move up from sprint distance to middle distance than it is from long distance down to sprint distance. The specificity which we need for the Olympic distance is quite different to what we are doing at the moment so that's going to be the main focus for next year."

Lough watched with fascination some of the tight finishes Wilde had with his fiercest rival Alex Yee. The British triathlete pipped the Kiwi on the run to win gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Lough first met Yee when he was 16, and worked with him as a coach/team manager at British Athletics before Yee decided to specialise in triathlon.

Just this week Yee added a spectacular chapter to his career by becoming the second-fastest British marathoner in history, just behind Farah, at the Valencia Marathon.

Yee still had one foot in triathlon in 2025 but didn't compete in the full WTCS series this year to focus on long-distance running.

But just like Wilde, the 27-year-old is expected to return back to Olympic distance triathlon full-time as he builds towards LA28.

"Come LA2028 it will be everyone out for himself on the start line," Lough said.

Hayden Wilde 2.0

Lough said it was difficult to underplay what Wilde had been through this year.

"He really shouldn't be able to do what he's doing but it's down to his dedication. We have a lot of work to do to get his swim back to where it needs to be ...that is a little bit of the weak link in his chain at the moment but he's very focused on getting that back. I'm looking forward to working with the new improved Hayden Wilde 2.0 in the next few years and bringing back more medals for New Zealand."

Lough has been to a few of Wilde's races this year but won't be going to Qatar.

"There's very little you can actually do on the day. I don't know if it's a trait of New Zealanders but Hayden Wilde is very very self-sufficient."

Wilde recently told World Triathlon's Youtube channel that the T100 series had highlighted the importance of being complete at all distances.

"You need to be one of the better swimmers in the world to keep in the front group. You need to be able to ride a time trial bike and ride it hard for 80km. You need to back up with an 18km run at pretty fast paces. So for me it's a challenge to show that I can be one of the most complete triathletes in the world," Wilde said.

When Wilde reflected on his year he said he refused to give up after the accident.

"That's the attitude I had, I was really happy to do enough to get back on the start line without doing any damage. That's the most important part is knowing how your body works and not pushing it too hard but pushing it enough where it does get a response."

A fourth finish at the T100 Triathlon World Championship Final will guarantee Wilde the series crown and NZ$345,000.

The race starts at 10:45pm NZ time on Friday.