What's New in the 2008 Tour de Ski?
Wed, Jun 6, 2007 - By Tour de Ski
Everybody agreed that the inaugural Tour was a success and that the basic idea works. For the second edition, the FIS Cross-Country Committee led by Chairman Vegard Ulvang reviewed the rules and made some adaptations:
The first adaptation is the introduction of a Tour Team Cup – a team scoring. In each Stage, the racing results (time) of the two best ladies and two best men per nation count for the Team Cup.
To provide the sprinters with more opportunities, the new Tour rules include increased Bonus Seconds. This means that the winners of the sprint races will receive a time bonus of 60 (rather than 50) seconds. The second placed will get –56 seconds, the third –52 seconds and so on until the 30th ranked athlete will earn -1 second.
In total, one million CHF will be awarded to the most successful athletes, the King and Queen of Cross-Country, the winners of the Sprint Ranking and the daily Stage winners. In the first edition of the Tour, the prize money was reduced only due to the cancellation of the first two races.
For the World Cup, the top 15 athletes will get half of the normal World Cup points for each Tour Stage if the athlete finishes the Tour and in the end, the winners will get 400 (4 x 100) World Cup points as last year. This means that if one athlete wins all races and the overall Tour ranking, they will receive 800 World Cup points. In order for these points to be awarded, the competitor must complete the Tour de Ski by crossing the finish line at the final competition of the Tour de Ski.
Here is an overview over the additional World Cup points on each stage of Tour de Ski:
1st place = 50 points 2nd place = 40 points 3rd place = 30 points 4th place = 25 points 5th place = 23 points 6th place = 20 points 7th place = 18 points 8th place = 16 points 9th place = 14 points 10th place = 13 points 11th place = 12 points 12th place = 11 points 13th place = 10 points 14th place = 9 points 15th place = 8 points
”It was important that we only change some details, not the whole rules system. We also paid special attention to the feedback we received from the athletes and teams. The Team Cup is an example of making the Tour more interesting for the bigger and smaller nations alike while the new World Cup point system underlines the importance of the Tour for the athletes,” notes Vegard Ulvang, Chairman of FIS Cross-Country Committee.