Are Alex Yee and Cassandre Beaugrand Triathlon’s Best Runners?

On July 10 Paris Olympic triathlon gold medalists Cassandre Beaugrand (FRA) and Alex Yee (GBR) will be competing at the prestigious Monaco Diamond League track and field meet – she in the 3,000m race, while he’ll run the 5,000. Since winning their gold medals, both have taken some time to focus on running, with notable success. Which got us thinking about just where these two sit compared to other runners in the sport.

Beaugrand has been on a running tear since last February, when she ran 14:53 at a 5K road race in Monaco, setting a new French record. In April 2026, she became the first French woman to run under 31 minutes for 10 km on the road, running 30:52. Last month (May 2026) at a club meet in Nice, Beaugrand ran 14:40:77 for 5,000 m on the track, breaking Margaret Maury’s record that had stood since 2004 by more than three seconds.

“I really surprised myself,” she told L’Équipe. “I’m not used to running with pacemakers, so I had to adjust my stride. But there were so many people cheering me on. I couldn’t let them down.”

Beaugrand’s appearance in Monaco will fulfill a childhood dream – in a recent Instagram post she recalled how she ran the Herculis kids 1,000 m race as a young girl, then watched the elite athletes compete that night, dreaming that could be her some day.

Beaugrand isn’t just focusing on her running heading into the Monaco race, though. After winning the World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS) Alghero race at the end of May, she’ll be competing at WTCS Quiberon in France on June 20. (The race is over the sprint distance.)

Beaugrand described her journey back to track and field racing in this video.

“Out of My Depth”

In his own Instagram post announcing he’ll be competing in Monaco, Yee wrote: “Out of my depth.. but that’s where I love to be! LFG”

After running 13:13.89 for 5,000 m in Belgium last August (a 16-second personal best), Yee will line up in Monaco as arguably the fastest triathlete ever over that distance. That speedy time will still be roughly 22 seconds slower than the France’s Jimmy Gressier’s best time – Gressier is the national record holder for the distance (12:51:59) and one of the headliners for the race in Monaco. Yee has experience at Diamond League track events, though – although his last event was in London seven years ago.

Where Yee truly excelled on the running front last year was in the marathon. After his 2:11:08 marathon debut in London, he regrouped and ran 2:06:38 in Valencia last December. At the time it was the second-fastest marathon ever run by a British man (after Mo Farah’s 2:05:11 in Chicago in 2018). This year Yee paced a couple of British athletes to faster times at the London Marathon, helping Mahamed Mahamed and Patrick Dever to 2:06:14 and 2:06:18 clockings to move himself to fourth on the all-time list for Great Britain.

Yee hasn’t had quite the success Beaugrand has enjoyed on the triathlon front this year – he took fifth at WTCS Yokohama and then DNF’d at WTCS Alghero – but will also be on the start line at WTCS Quiberon this weekend.

Olympic Double?

There have been a few examples of triathletes who have competed at the Olympics in different sports, but no one has managed to complete the double on the track and also in the triathlon event at the same Games.

At the first Olympics that hosted a triathlon, Sydney, 2000, Canadian Carol Montgomery did qualify for both the triathlon and the 10,000 m. Unfortunately she crashed during the triathlon and broke her wrist and would eventually have to pull out of the 10,000 m event. She did go on to compete at the 2004 Games in Athens, but only in the triathlon. She finished 35th and would retire later that year.

One of Beaugrand’s biggest rivals, Beth Potter, represented Great Britain at the 2016 Games in Rio in the 10,000 m. She would then go on to make the Paris Olympics as a triathlete, taking bronze in the individual and mixed relay events.

American Sheila Taormina one-upped Potter by competing at four different Olympics between 1996 and 2008 in three different sports. Taormina won gold in 1996 in Athens as part of the 4 x 200 m freestyle relay team – the team also set the world record. Four years later she was competing as a triathlete, finishing sixth in the first triathlon at the Olympics. She would end up 23rd in the triathlon at the Athens Games four years later. As if all that wasn’t enough, Taormina would take up modern pentathlon after the 2004 Games and, four years later, would become the first woman to make it to the Olympics in three different sports, finishing 19th in Beijing.

American Taylor Knibb appears to be the only athlete who has competed at triathlon and another sport at the same Games. In Paris, Knibb competed in both the individual time trial and the triathlon races. Three crashes in the time trial (the conditions were so slippery that the team mechanic even slipped trying to get Knibb a spare bike) would eventually lead to a 19th-place finish on the bike. Knibb would take 19th in the individual triathlon before sprinting past Potter in the mixed relay to give the USA the silver medal.

Yee, or Beaugrand, could try to duplicate Knibb’s feat with a track/ triathlon double at the LA Games in 2028, but it certainly wouldn’t be easy. The individual triathlon races take place on Saturday, July 15 (women’s) and Sunday, July 16 (men’s), while the mixed relay is slated for Thursday, July 20.

Here’s the challenge for the track double – the men’s 10,000 m race is slated for July 15, so that’s not an option for Yee. The 5,000 m is a more realistic option – it’s set for Monday, July 24, with the prelim on Friday, July 21. The women’s 5,000 m final takes place on Tuesday, July 18, with the prelim on July 15, the same day as the individual triathlon. Bouncing back for the women’s 10,000 m final on Friday, July 21, seems like it would be a tough turnaround, too.

Triathlon/ Run Speedsters

Even if they don’t end up competing on the track in LA, where do Yee and Beaugrand’s running performances rank them compared to other triathletes?

Potter’s track 10,000 m PB is 32:03 and she ran 32:05 on the road. In 2021 she ran what was, for a short time, the world-best time for 5 km on the road – using the brand new Asics Metaspeed Sky for an impressive 14:41 performance. (Beaugrand’s national record for 5 km on the road is that 14:53 we mentioned earlier.) Potter’s best 5,000 m time on the track is 15:28.32, but it is worth noting that is from 2016.

Rio Olympic triathlon champion Gwen Jorgensen shifted her focus to running after the 2016 Games (returning to her roots – she ran and swam at the University of Wisconsin before becoming a triathlete) and would clock PBs of 15:08.28 and 31:55.68 on the track.

For the men, Yee’s rival and the silver medalist from Paris, Hayden Wilde, ran 13:23.91 at a track race in Spain in 2024, then narrowly missed the New Zealand national 10K record on the road when he ran 27:39 at the Asics Tokyo Speed Race in May, 2025. That’s faster than Yee’s best time for either 10,000 m (27:51.94) or 10K (28:07). So Yee has the quicker 5,000 m track times, with Wilde holding the edge over 10K on the road.

American Morgan Pearson was a seven-time All-American at the University of Colorado and was part of CU’s NCAA cross-country national championship team in 2014. He ran 13:36.22 over 5,000 m during his track career and has clocked a 1:01:01 half marathon, too.

If you want to really add some fun to the mix, Pearson’s 3:43:41 for 1,500 m is the fastest time we can find for a triathlete over that distance. Both he and France’s Dorian Coninx (3:45:.74) are both faster than Yee and Wilde for the metric mile.

Run for Dough

The old adage is that, in triathlon, you “bike for show and run for dough.” The important thing to remember, though, is that unlike a straight running event, once you hit the run you’ve already got through a swim and a bike. Which is why being the fastest runner, while it certainly helps, doesn’t guarantee the win at a triathlon race.

Whether or not Beaugrand and Yee are the best runners in the sport, they certainly seem to be the only two with the credentials to compete at a Diamond League event among the world’s best runners right now. Which should make that meet in Monaco on July 10th an exciting one to watch for triathlon fans.

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