The IRF Introduces the 2003 Tour Race
Date: 2003-05-08
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The International Racketlon Federation today launches the IRF Racketlon World Tour Race of 2003. It is an easy-to-understand, simple-to-follow annual race from season start to season end. Every player starts at zero at the beginning of the year and the player who accumulates the most points by the end of the year is the Winner of the Tour.

After two tournaments on the 2003 tour, Swedish Open in January and British Open last week, the top of the Tour Race scoring list looks as follows:

1 Rickard Persson Sweden 1500
2 Magnus "Lia" Eliasson Sweden 1400
3 John O'Donnell England 800
4 Mats Källberg Sweden 600
Marcel Weigl Austria 600
6 Stefan Adamsson Sweden 500
7 Henrik Håkansson Sweden 300
8 Mathias Fagerström Sweden 200
Håkan Granberg Sweden 200
Stefan Larsson Sweden 200
Steve Thomson Scotland 200

As seen, Rickard Persson has surprisingly taken the lead ahead of the World Champion and World #1, Magnus Eliasson. His top postition follows his victory in British Open and a fourth place in Swedish Open. Eliasson, who's results are a mirror image of Persson's (winner of Swedish Open and fourth in British Open after his foot ligament injury in the semifinal) is not far behind, however, and, given that he is almost recovered by now, he arguably remains the outstanding favorite to win the 2003 Tour.

For the full length Race list see this link, which will always contain the latest update. A link will also be available under "THE GAME" on the Racketlon.com start page. It will be the ambition of Racketlon.com to publish an updated list after every event on the tour.

 


Rickard Persson, the leader of the Race, directly after winning British Open, 2003

The tour continues with Finnish Open next week (16-18 May), which looks set to be one of the toughest racketlon tournaments ever played with most of the world top ten participating. This is how the list looks at present:

1 Magnus "Lia" Eliasson Sweden 15340,34
2 Mats Källberg Sweden 10379,83
3 Mikko Kärkkäinen Finland 9357,23
4 Stefan Adamsson Sweden 6795,03
5 Roland Helle Sweden 6448,41
6 Staffan Ericsson Sweden 5671,03
7 Toni Kemppinen Finland 5423,91
8 Rickard Persson Sweden 4975,53
9 Ola Carleke Sweden 4528,79
10 Ari-Matti Koskinen Finland 4348,62

It is still possible to apply for Finnish Open! Deadline: Sunday 11 May. For the details look under EVENTS on the www.racketlon.com startpage.

 

Here is how it works

The Tour Race will run in parallel with the World Ranking and the two should not be confused. The ambition of the World Ranking will remain to continuously reflect true capacity within the international Racketlon community, while the Tour Race scoring list aims to simply record who gets the most points in the tournaments of the tour during 2003. The player at the top of the World Ranking is the World Number 1 while the player at the top of the Race scoring list is the leader of the Tour Race and therefore best positioned to win the Tour by the end of the year.

From a more technical perspective (compare with the principles of the World Ranking) there are three differences between the Tour Race scoring list and the World Ranking:

1. 2003 only.
The basis for the Tour Race 2003 is Tour events during 2003 only. The World Ranking, on the other hand, covers all tour events that have been staged during the last three years on a rolling schedule.

2. No erosion.
In the World Ranking system a recent tournament carries more weight than a tournament played some time ago through a process of "erosion" (the ranking points continuously erode away over a period of three years). This is not the case for the Tour Race. The amount of points awarded for a tournament result stay the same irrespective of time. This means that e.g. Swedish Open in the beginning of the year will carry the same weight as Austrian Open in September when the Winner of the Tour is appointed in November.

3. No quality mechanism.
In the World Ranking system there is a "quality mechanism" that is designed to make it possible for players that do not compete in many tournaments but perform very well in the ones they do take part in to still get fairly high positions on the World Ranking. This is not the case for the Tour Race. If you want to win the race it really pays off to play many tournaments on the tour.

In all other respects the World Ranking and the Tour Race will follow the same principles; the same base points, the same class and prestige factors. Also, the identical spreadsheet (excel) will be used for the compilations of the list. That is where to go to see the details on how the calculations have been made.

 

Finally, an example to show how the system works in practice: To some it might look strange that Persson is ahead of Eliasson with 100 points although they seem to have identical results from the two tournament that have been played sofar (1st in one of the tournaments and 4th in the other) but it is a direct consequence of how the ranking points are calculated.. The system takes it as a fundamental principle that base points are rewarded for match victories and match victories alone. And the simple rule is that every match victory gives 1 base point except quarter finals, semifinals and finals that are considered harder to win and therefore give more points (2, 3 and 5 base points respectively). The difference between Persson and Eliasson is 1 base point (=100 points in the Elite class) and is simply explained by the fact that Persson has won one more match. And the reason behind that is that Eliasson was given a bye in London because he was seeded number one while Persson was not since he was not seeded at all. It can be questioned whether this is fair since Eliasson did not get the same opportunity as Persson to play a first round match that he probably would have won easily but this could also be seen as the challenger's advantage; The higher your seed the greater the risk to get a bye. The lower your seed the bigger the chance to get an opportunity to gain an extra point. (Seeded players have other obvious advantages so this small challenger's advantage is arguably more than justified.) Again, for full details on how the system works, see the principles of the World Ranking.

 

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