Tour de Ski Changes the Rules

Thu, Oct  4, 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 already at the FIS calendar meeting in Portoroz (SLO) in May. A summary of the most important rules amendments follows:

Newly introduced will be the Tour Team Cup – a team scoring. In each Stage, the racing results (time score) of the two best ladies and two best men per nation will count for the Team Cup.

To provide the sprinters with additional 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. Moreover, additional intermediate sprints are included in this year's Tour de Ski in three distance races (both competitions in Oberstdorf, one in Val di Fiemme).

Another novelty in the rules is that if a racer loses more the 18% (ladies)/ 15% (men) compared with the winner's time in an individual start race then she or he is excluded from the rest of the Tour. Overlapping and skipping a race will also lead to exclusion.

In total, one million Swiss francs 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 Stage provided 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. Click here for an overview of the World Cup points on the Tour de Ski.