He’s the current world champion and one of the favourites for Olympic gold in 2028, but Aussie triathlete Matt Hauser goes into the unknown as a rookie wildcard this weekend for his first crack at a format that has revolutionised the sport.
Hauser will make his debut in the lucrative global T100 Triathlon World Tour in Singapore, a perfect fit for TV middle-distance event that fills a gap between Olympic and Ironman triathlons.
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While his last competitive outing was winning the 2025 World Triathlon Championship Series, capping it with a victory in Wollongong in October, the T100 has significant differences, and Hauser is making a transition akin to a T20 specialist thrust into a five-day Test match debut for his opening event of 2026.
Everything is bigger in T100, starting with the prize money on offer, which is one of the main drivers behind Hauser’s decision to accept an invitation to compete after he was called out by a longtime Kiwi rival.
The season prize pool runs into the millions, combining appearance contracts and race winnings, giving it a scale and professionalism that far exceeds traditional triathlon events.
It features contracted stars and wildcards competing for points at each stop, building toward a grand final in Qatar where the overall champions are crowned.
The races are longer too. In WTCS competition the athletes contest two distances across the season, sprint and Olympic, which take around 40 minutes for the first and just under two hours for the other.
In comparison T100 is named for the combined distance of 100km, made up of a 2km swim, 80km bike and 18km run. A race can take up to three and a half hours, perhaps longer in an oppressive climate such as Singapore’s.
It requires more endurance than the formats Hauser is best known for, but the distance aside, there is another significant difference that he must adjust to.
At T100 level, athletes use time trial (TT) bikes rather than the road bikes featured in Olympic-distance racing, which immediately changes the dynamic of the cycling leg.
TT bikes are built for aerodynamics, with riders positioned low and forward on aero bars to reduce drag and maintain high speeds over long distances.
Unlike draft-legal races where athletes ride in packs and can sit in behind each other, T100 racing is non-drafting, so each athlete is effectively racing alone against the wind. The bike leg becomes less about quick bursts and handling in a group, and more about holding a machine-like intensity, churning through the kilometres for two hours or more.
“It’s become quite Formula 1-esque, where it’s a bit like the more time and money you spend on the bike and time you spend in the wind tunnel the better you perform,” Hauser told Fox Sports Australia ahead of his debut.
“It’s not necessarily how strong you are, it’s more about how aerodynamic you are. There’s a 20-metre draft zone so it kind of allows for less of a punchy, fast bike and more of a controlled ride to your own tempo, not being able to draft and then get that benefit from sitting on other people’s wheels.
“With the TT bike, you are kind of in that aero position, tucked in on the aero bars, so there are quite a few differences to that versus short course racing, where it’s more of the traditional road bike sense, you’re in a pack of riders, you’re working together to close gaps.”
He won’t know if it suits him or otherwise until he’s deep into the 80km of pedalling.
“I’ll find out for sure whether it’s harder for me. I think there’s a misconception that short course racing is easier because you can draft on the bike but the numbers certainly don’t show that on our power meters,” said Hauser.
It is, though, a completely new technique to master, and requires physical adaptation.
“It certainly hurts the neck and shoulders a little bit more having to tuck in and create your own aero gains rather than sitting behind someone else’s wheel and getting the benefit of drafting. It’ll be interesting to see how it challenges me,” Hauser said.
‘SCARY’ CRASH DISRUPTS PREPARATIONS
If that wasn’t enough, Hauser’s preparations were set back by a frightening occupational hazard faced by cyclists and triathletes everywhere, getting knocked off by a car while training.
“I’ve kind of had the most interrupted preparation I have had to miss a race and it’s probably the most prepared I need to be for a race. So, everything’s kind of working against me,” said Hauser, who also missed training days through illness.
He was riding on the road, and then suddenly he wasn’t.
“It’s always very scary. Like, your heart skips a few beats,” Hauser said. “It was a car pulling into a car park with no indicator. I was left with nowhere to go, fell flat on my arse, hit my head.”
Hauser suffered a hyperextended finger and a fracture.
“Thankfully, I came off fairly unscathed other than those two things. It’s just another unfortunate mishap that comes from drivers being a little bit unaware of cyclists. I came off second best that day.”
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The incident took him back to another, more serious crash in 2018. Again, he was riding on the road, and then suddenly he wasn’t, as a driver opened her car door in his path.
“I was just rolling down a hill in Tugun [near his home on the Gold Coast] doing 45 to 50 km an hour and she stopped me dead in my tracks,” Hauser recalls. “I had a shoulder reconstruction, a plate and screws put in my hand. I was on the sidelines because of it. I’ve been unlucky a few times, but thankfully, I’ve been able to bounce back. So, this will be no different.”
On both occasions Hauser said the attitude was to “get back on the horse as soon as possible.” “You have to, because it’s a necessary danger. You get more experience and become more aware and more conscious of drivers and making sure you’re doing the right thing as a cyclist as well. S*** happens, I guess.”
‘THE PRESSURE’S NOT ON ME’
Hauser made his Olympic debut at the delayed Tokyo Games and by Paris he was a genuine medal contender and finished seventh in the individual event despite a fall in transition. His placing was the third best of all time by an Australian male at the Olympics, behind Greg Bennett’s fourth placing in 2004 and Miles Stewart’s sixth in Sydney.
“Paris was a good day. If it was a perfect day I might have seen a medal around my neck,” said Hauser.
“It took me between Tokyo and Paris to learn how to win, how to be consistent. Between that Paris and LA gap, I think it’s about winning or being in a podium position consistently enough to make sure that on a good day it is still a medal and on a perfect day it could be the win.
“That’s my evolution and my goal now is to make sure that while expectation and pressure is heavy, it’s earned. I need to make sure I’m ready for that because you have to perform one day every four years ultimately.”
Last year he excelled across both sprint and Olympic-distance events and secured the overall world title with a statement win in Wollongong.
“Life’s a lot busier. Good busy,” said Hauser of the impact of his win.
“It has given me a lot of opportunities to just be a bit more explorative in my approach to training, commercial opportunities have increased, and so has external expectation and then also internal expectation.
“That’s why I think it’s important to come out in Singapore and have a race where I’m not world champion in that distance. I’ve got nothing to prove, the pressure’s not on me, so I think that would be a nice way to introduce my racing for the 2026 season, and just not to be afraid to fail. I won’t win every race from now on up until LA 2028, so what I want to do is continue to learn and develop and grow.”
Kayo Sports will stream Event 2 of the 2026 World Triathlon Series from Singapore this Saturday, 25 April, from 4:00pm to 8:00pm AEST. | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.
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‘RIGHTO MATE, I’LL TAKE YOU UP ON THAT’
Education is part of why Hauser will be tackling the T100. But there are other reasons.
“Money-wise, there are quite a lot of opportunities in the longer, middle-distance realm of triathlons,” he says, with race prizemoney in the realm of double what he can make in WTCS events.
“This series being a bit more privately backed, it just has a little bit more commercial value and a lot more money has been pumped into it compared to the traditional triathlon scene, being Olympic based.”
The series offers a total of $US4.2 million ($A5.9m) in prize money, divided into $US2.75 million ($A3.8m) for race purses and $US1.45 million $A2m) for end-of-season bonuses. The winner on Saturday will pocket at least $US50,000 ($A70,000).
And there was the call out by Kiwi Hayden Wilde, a two-time Olympic medallist who dominated the T100 series last year and took to social media to urge Hauser to give the longer distance a try.
“It wasn’t a specific pick up the phone moment, but it was a righto mate, I’ll take you up on that,” Hauser said of his reaction.
So, what result will he be happy with this weekend?
“I’ve been asking myself this question over the last couple of weeks,” he said. “First, I want to finish and finish with a strong positive result. For me that looks like a top five.
“Obviously, this is a completely new game for me, but also a game where competitors in the short course realm such as Hayden Wilde have been able to cross over and be relatively dominant in the last year or two.
“So, while I’m making that jump a little bit later and probably a little bit more short term and he’s designed his career path, I think you have to respect that. Yeah, it’s going to have to be a bit of a learning curve but I hope it’s a positive one.”
And there’s one more reason he’s heading into the unknown, keeping himself fresh for the ultimate quest in two years’ time.
“Short-term goals are definitely important to make sure that you’re not killing yourself towards the long-term goal,” Hauser said.
“I think to have things to shoot for in the meantime, like Wollongong last year, that was really important for me to know that if I set something I can really achieve it.
“Having those short-term goals to make sure that I’m ticking off the processes in the lead up to that longer-term goal I think is really important.”
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