Well, at this point it almost seems like a weekly déjà vu since the top position in the men´s ranking changed almost every week since the World Championships in August. But every athlete who makes it to the top certainly deserves some spotlight. Especially the athlete who is the new #1 in this week´s ranking since he´s the most successful athlete since we started to track the results of aquabike races in Europe by the start of the 2021 race season.
After winning no less than nine races (!) this season before last weekend, you might wonder, why he hasn´t been on top of the rankings before. That´s why I´d like to start with a little explanation about how the rankings and the points for the races actually come about. So this is what you can read in our Aquabike Ranking Europe FAQ page about the points calculation:
The points of each athlete in each race are calculated individually. The factors that we include in this calculation are:
- the ranking position in the race
- the time gap to the winner of the race
- the number of finishers
- the race distance
- the difficulty level of the race
- additional multiplier for National, European and World Championships
The exact formula of how the points are calculated remains our secret 😉. But if you follow the results and the rankings a little bit you might have noticed that the number of finishers of a race is certainly a big factor.
The nine races our new number one has won this season were all standard distance races with low difficulty level and rather little numbers of race finishers. So there were no big points to make in those races.
But last weekend he started in the probably biggest aquabike race ever (by the number of starters) in Great Britain. With no less than 115 athletes finishing the race there were quite some points to grab in this competition.
So the second place in the aquabike race of the Bournemouth International Triathlon finally made
Mark Yeoman
the well deserved new #1 in the Aquabike Ranking Europe, dethrowning World Championship´s runner up Jonas Hafemann after only one week at the top. Congratulations Mark!
After nine wins in nine races with the fastest swim AND bike split in every race, he had to settle for second in Bournemouth behind strong young athlete Robin Hughes who showed a certainly remarkable performance.
However, Mark´s place in the sun is certainly well deserved! Achieving this without a single middle or long distance race and without competing in any international championship race, where the big points are made, is something we probably won´t see that often.
Chapeau!