Bermuda's Flora Duffy added to her legendary status in the sport by holding off Britain's Georgia Taylor-Brown in the United Arab Emirates' capital to win a record fourth women's world title, and the men's race produced one of the most spectacular tussles I have been there to witness in sport.

All eyes were on the clear favourites Hayden Wilde of New Zealand and Alex Yee of Britain who were expected to do battle for overall gold, but it was France's Léo Bergère who crashed the party by taking victory. 

Yee and Wilde failed to make the lead group on the bike, and the title changed hands four times within the race. 

The leaders at the start of the day ultimately both finished one place lower than required to take the title - Yee missed out on third on the day in a sprint with Belgium's Jelle Geens, and Wilde, who it was later revealed was suffering with COVID-19, was relegated from fifth to sixth on the last run lap by Australia's Matthew Hauser. A brilliant race from Bergère made him the unlikely beneficiary.

The mathematicians worked overtime on the day to examine how the battle for the title was unfolding, and it created a day packed full of drama in the searing Abu Dhabi heat.

It was therefore with great excitement I travelled to Pontevedra for this year's Championship Series finale.

The setting for this year's Championship Finals, the first in Spain, could scarcely have been more contrasting. Abu Dhabi, a city with a population of around 1.8 million, provided a sleek setting with its spacious low-lying Yas Island waterfront and plethora of chain restaurants. The opening press conference was a 30-minute drive away in the metropolis.

Pontevedra is a quaint city of about 83,000 people in the Galicia region. Everything is in walking distance. There is no big M denoting one particular fast-food restaurant emblematic of the planet's globalisation, with the independent restaurants which populate the old town placing a heavy emphasis on local cuisine, particularly the delicious seafood.

For the World Triathlon Championship Finals, it has maximised what it has to deliver a show for the world, from the swim start at the iconic Tirantes Bridge to the transition area at the small Centro Gallego de Tecnificación Deportiva athletics stadium and the run through the packed, narrow, hilly and pedestrianised streets of the old town.

It has formed a perfect backdrop for what has been another thrilling three days and an example of what makes World Triathlon's Championship Finals format so brilliant.

In the men's race, lightning unbelievably struck twice as Yee and Wilde were foiled by a Frenchman again. They were in an even stronger position this year compared to last in Abu Dhabi, and again heavy favourites to take the title. Yet the sense that history might be about to repeat itself was palpable when Yee and Wilde - Olympic silver and bronze medallists respectively - finished the swim around 45sec back on the leaders and both failed to make the lead group.

Alarm bells were seriously ringing when Yee failed to make the chase group on the bike and Wilde picked up a 15sec penalty for dropping his swim hat on the pontoon - fine margins as had it dropped in the water, which only a narrow post prevented it from doing so, he would have been okay.

The penalty proved costly to Wilde's title hopes, his huge efforts to mount a brilliant fightback ultimately in vein as he placed ninth. Bergère looked as though he might have been good to defend his title in an eerily close repeat of last year, but instead it was his compatriot Dorian Coninx who prevailed in a sprint finish and was crowned world champion.

Perhaps the only other individual Olympic sport which uses a similar final at the end of a year-long series format to decide its world champion is recent addition surfing.

World Triathlon, then the International Triathlon Union, moved away from its standalone World Championships in favour of an annual Championship Series for the first time in 2009, the year after Spain's Marisol Casado, who became an International Olympic Committee member in 2010, was elected as President.

While the World Surf League's recent changes including the introduction of a mid-year cut and the winner-takes-all format have proved far from universally popular, World Triathlon deploys a ranking system which takes into account all the races on the year's circuit to crown the world champion. Series events carry up to 1,000 points for the winners, and the Finals 1,250 points.

It is a sensible format which decides the best in the world over the course of the year rather than on a single day, albeit that final day is of particular importance, and one which works well for triathlon. Anyone who has followed what happened in Abu Dhabi or here in Pontevedra can testify to the excitement it has generated.

"We were scared at the beginning because we never thought it was going to be so successful, but it is," Casado acknowledged to insidethegames.

"It is all about the classification and the ranking, this is something very important. People do not travel to all of them, only five count including the Grand Final.

"We were in a situation when I started in 2009 that for me, coming from the Spanish Federation, it was so important to be very clear that the sport is about competition, and you need to have competition and the competition should be in the hands of the national governing body or international governing body.

"We have had some very good ones, at the beginning we had Hamburg that is still there, we've had Tokyo and Yokohama that is still there, big and well-known cities like London and Madrid, and with this it is easy to convince others to be part of this story."

Could the format work in other sports as well? Many already stage World Cup-type circuits and are happy with a standalone World Championships as the pinnacle of their sport in addition to that, but triathlon offers a guaranteed route to edge-of-the-seat drama.

What many other sports could for sure take from the Championship Finals is the mass participation element. The weekend also incorporates under-23 World Championship races, Para Triathlon Championships and competition in age groups ranging from 15 to 19 up to 85 to 89. It creates a family feel unparalleled at other events I have covered, as I wrote in a blog following last year's Championship Finals.

With the mass marathon set to feature 20,024 runners at next year's Olympics in Paris, Casado is hopeful a wider triathlon event could take place alongside Los Angeles 2028.

"I try very hard, because I have been proposing this mass participation, maybe they don't recall, but even before the French decided to have a marathon, which I understand because it is simpler to organise," she said.

"We are trying but I think it is very complicated. We are trying to be in Los Angeles because we are going to be in the place where we had the birth of this sport in California, so I think there should be a mass participation, but it is very complicated because the system of the North American way of management is very different than this side of the Atlantic."

At the elite level, triathlon looks in a good place with thrilling battles and rivalries set to play out at Paris 2024, and next year's Championship Finals when they return to Spain in Málaga. It will be a year to follow closely for the latest chapters in storylines which took another turn in Pontevedra.