As expected, the European Championships brought quite some shifts in the top ranks of the Aquabike.World Ranking. If you compare the Men´s and the Women´s rankings, you will notice that they look very different. In this article we´ll take a closer look at the reasons for this.
But first of all, let´s honor the new leaders of the Aquabike.World Rankings. In the Men´s rankings the new #1 really isn´t a big surprise at all. After stunning performances taking the overall win in both, the World Championships in Ibiza in May and now the European Championships in Belgium, the new and well-deserved leader comes from Fance. Chapeau and Congratulations go out to
Mathieu Dumont
Well done, Mathieu!
Germany´s Frank Erk is now sitting in 2nd position after finishing in a podium spot in the European Championships and also scoring some big points in other races this season. The former leader of the rankings Ross Hamilton and Kris Whitelaw are now 3rd and 4th in the rankings.
As already mentioned, the Women´s ranking looks quite different. After last year´s European Champion Amy Pritchard could not fully repeat her incredibly strong performance from last year, she lost quite a few points, falling back to 7th place. However, she is still the only women in the top 10 who finished the European Championships. We´ll go into the reasons for that below. But first a shout out to the new #1 in the rankings
Gayle Galletta
She finished in the Top10 in the US Nationals over the standard distance and in the Top20 at the World´s in Ibiza. But she also scored some big points in no less than 5 other races in the last 12 months. Most notably at the Patriot Half in Massachusetts this June where she finished 4th overall out of 40 competitors. Congratulations Gayle!
Joanne Salaz in second place is another US athlete who scored well in 7 races over the last 12 months. Britain´s Delyth Williams is currently completing the podium after finishing in the top 10 in both World Championships and also gaining quite a few more points in some local races.
While the men´s top ranks are quite international with athletes from seven countries in the top 10, we only have aquabikers from US and UK in the women´s top ranks. So why are the rankings that different? Well, first of all, we should recognize the fact that the share of female athletes is much higher in the US and UK than in other countries. This means that not only the absolute number of aquabike athletes is bigger – this is of course also the case for men. But the share of US and UK athletes combined is much higher in women´s than in men´s racing. While 56% of the ranked men come from the United States or the United Kingdom, almost two thirds of the female athletes come from these countries.
But there´s another factor that is even more important. The top male athletes participate in the top races (World, European and National Championships) more often than the best female athletes. There is no female athlete who finished on the podium in two of those high score races. And most of those who still finished well in one or two big races, did not race in any other aquabike races. That leads to the situation that most of the women in the top positions of the ranking are athletes who do well in a lot of local races.
However, with many of the top ranked female athletes having to defend a lot of points from last year´s late season and two more high profile races still coming up (Standard Distance World´s in Pontevedra and the long course US nationals at the Clash Daytona) we might see a whole different ranking by the end of the year. So we´ll certainly keep an eye on the women´s rankings over the next few weeks.