Written by Llotyhy of Hog Bay CT
With Day 85 behind us we can officially end the Season 34 World Tour. Just like last season Norway scored the double, winning both the Clash of Nations and the World Tour. With that already well established multiple races from the end, the last average-race of the season was one mostly for the books. Stijn Heremans from Belgium earned the bilingual country a nice victory in the Oslo Grand Prix (WT), in front of Ludvig Kristiansen from Denmark and Pierre-Antoine Redon from France. While Netherlands failed to score, they had secured their second place in the final rankings earlier. Denmark however, snatched third place right under Poland’s nose, who failed to sign up yet again. Belgium finished on fifth place and France on sixth place, still only 70 points behind the podium. In Div-B, in the Tabor GrandPrix (WT), Juš Rozman from Slovenia took home the flowers, which brought Slovenia into the first division. Congratulations are in order there! New Zealand and Chile did more or less the same with their respective second and third places. In Glasgow –Edinburgh (WT) Austria scored a victory in the final race by the hands of Jonathan Hoffmann, facilitating a promotion | | into Div-B for next season.
So, which countries did well and which countries didn’t? It’s always quite hard to answer this question, because there are multiple factors to deal with. At the beginning of the season I put up a list of active riders per country and that gives a good indication how big the countries are in OCM. However, it won’t tell you how many riders are trained, how well they are trained or how good the riders ended up. My own Bermuda is a prime example of a country that’s quite small, but has a relatively high amount of well-trained riders, which helps a lot. I might make a list the way Avataria was suggesting, by looking at AV45+ riders, next season, we’ll see. Still, we can determine some things from the original list.
Countries that deserve praise in my opinion:
Burundi, my god hhauge, I’m really in awe of your performance this year. http://bit.ly/1IoDEBt this is everything Burundi has. It’s pitiful, really. There are some decent riders on there, of course, but so few and far between that’s it’s ridiculous to think Burundi could finish twelfth in the WT and eleventh in the CoN. Still, Burundi made it work, amazing job!
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Norway, people tend to forget quite quickly that Norway isn’t a big OCM country at all. In terms of rider numbers it was on ninth place at the beginning of the season and if you look at the history of the World Tour Norway isn’t a big player *at all*. Still, Sortland made it look easy, by absolutely dominating the season and improving on their points total by ten points compared to last year, well done!
Chile, Sebastian Anguita really took the bull by the horns this season, by promoting Chile all the way to Div-A, with a relatively tiny number of riders. Together with Bermuda and Burundi the only country in Div-A that is well in the lower half of the list of riders per country. Keep it up for next season!
I thought very hard and very long if I also wanted to name some countries that could/should have done better, but I don’t really want to rub it in too much, so I’ll just name them and not overanalyze it to death:Spain, Portugal and Italy, I’m looking at you especially.
Good luck to everyone on the WT-break and I’ll guess we’ll see eachother again on Season 35, with a blank sheet and a brand new World Tour to enjoy.
Salud!
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