A recent rule change regarding eligability for the World Cup races has been creating a hornets nest of activity in our wee global skeleton world over the last week. The FIBT has introduced a rule saying that to be eligible to race in world cup races this season, an athlete must have competed in 5 international races, on 3 tracks spread over the last two seasons, exceptions have been made for athletes who do not meet this criteria but have competed in a world cup previously. This rule will exclude new athletes who started racing last year, thankfully this does not affect the Kiwi team but it impacts hugely on the Australian AIS skeleton program, up to recently they were planning to enter two women in each race, now the only aussie female who meets the criteria is Kim Hardy, their most experienced international athlete, who is not supported by the AIS funded program. The rule also impacts of the British development program, with 3 of their development athletes now excluded from world cup, and Norways women's team, who for the first year in many had two athletes lined up to race on the world tour, now only one is able to race. This is a big issue as world cup qualification, Olympic qualification and world championships qualification all depend on your nations ranking which is based on the combined points of two athletes racing on the world tour. This year this rule will effect the bigger nations who were not expecting it, and whose program's and Olympic selection was based on including the now excluded athletes, but in the long run it is a rule that will have a huge negative effect on all the small nations including NZ, for example, should two kiwi women (or men) retire in the next two years, and we do not have a junior training up and racing on the Americas Cup or Europe Cup series, NZ will not have the required two athletes gaining nation points and it would be likely that we would fall out of the world cup tour (which is limited to the top 12 nations only based on nation points), once out, it will be a real challenge to get back in. The Kiwi team is all self funded (we all find our own sponsors), our association does not run development programs, it has no money, so I hope we find some more 'adventurous kiwi women' and get them on sleds learning to slide over the next few years, as it would be tragic if in the future a kiwi was one of the best sliders in the world but unable to slide in world cup races solely because of the lack of team mates, and was forced to drop back to a lower ranking series where their only competition and challenge will be other nations developing athletes, or those who didn't make their nations world cup team, or the nations who did not perform well enough to make the world tour .
The year Kelly started, I was the only experienced kiwi woman sliding, but the rules back then let me take a person with absolutely no experience and within a week of first seeing a track throwing her off the top in a world cup race to gain the required nation points to stay in the world cup, thankfully Kelly ended up being very good, loving it, and wanting to continue (it was a gamble, I am glad I found the right person), but with the new rules that will never happen again...
I wouldn't be surprised if some nations ended up trying get the rule over turned...
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