With the switch from aquabike.events to Aquabike.World our Aquabike Ranking Europe now became the Aquabike.World Ranking.
We have now listed all aquabike race results from all around the world from January 1st 2021. So you can also check the past ranking from 2021.
In the current ranking we have more than 4000 athletes in the Men´s Ranking and more than 3000 athletes in the Women´s Ranking from 37 countries.
If you look at the current ranking it might be a bit of a surprise that European Athletes are still quite dominant in the top ranks (at least in the men´s ranking) – quite different to the 2021 ranking. There were two a bit extraordinary circumstances last year which had an influence here. The European Championships in Bilbao have been the biggest race of the season with the most points to grab. There were less competitors at the long distance World´s in Samorin – probably due to the relatively late announcement of date and location of the event this year after the original location in Australia had to be cancelled. And also the first ever Standard Distance World Championships attracted less athletes. In this case probably rather because of the exotic location and unusual time of the year, long after the season for most athletes in the northern hemisphere was over.
The second factor might be a bit controversial. 
During the process of importing all the results from the last years, an important question came up. What should we do with results from events where the swim was cancelled? In most cases when the swim has to be cancelled, the triathlon turns into a duathlon and the aquabike race gets cancelled alltogether. But in some cases the aquabike race still takes place. Either as a pure time trial on the bike or in some cases with a short run before. And there was one notable event in 2022 where exactly that happened. The National Long Distance Aquabike Championships at the Toughman in September. So this is a big race and there are big points to earn. But after all… an aquabike race without the swim is nothing but a bike race. That´s why I decided not to count those events. I´m really sorry for the US guys for missing the chance to score big. But on the other hand many other countries don´t even have National Championships at all. If you check the rankings from 2021 you will see that the US athletes have been very present there. Let´s see how this develops in 2023…
While the leaders in the Men´s and the Women´s Rankings remained unchanged compared the to the previous Aquabike Ranking Europe, it´s not a big surprise that the lead in the Country Ranking changed. With more than 3500 US athletes finishing an aquabike race in 2022 we have a clear new leader in this ranking. UK is still in second place of course, but the third spot on the countrie´s pdoidum might be a bit of a surprise. Ahead of Australia and Canada – both countries with much more aquabike races – it´s Spain who´s currently sitting in 3rd place. Of course the European´s in Bilbao are a factor here. But it´s not the only reason. While the number of races might be smaller (though fast growing) in Spain, there were quite a few big events that attracted a lot of aquabike athletes. So despite the smaller number of races, the number of Spanish aquabike athletes who finished a race in 2022 isn´t much smaller than those from Australia and Canada. And while there are many sprint and standard distance races in the other countries, all of the races in Spain have been middle or long distance races which of course earn a few more points.