Christmas holidays are having a significant impact on karting activity. This week we saw some karters coming back from inactivity: Michael Liem passed 4 players on Frappe Snowland flap, and climbed to 9th place in nonSC average finish. Michael Jongerius returned from a time trialing adventure in Super Mario Kart, and is now looking to climb higher in the elite ranks. Josh Hawkins returned with some nice PRs, which put him close to the top 100 in AvgFin and ARR standings.

Tom Gaffikin's quest for King B

Then we have Tom Gaffikin who claims he can reach King B within 1.5 weeks (between 23rd December 2001 and 2nd January 2002)". In the first two days of his attempt, he made an amazing climb from Elite F to Elite B! After that he slowed down a little. But PRs are still very impressive. King B might be a bit over-ambitious. But at this pace it's very likely that he will reach King before the end this year.

Other active karters

Lars Nouwen was forced to stop karting for a couple days, because of a broken controller. He now has a new one, and immediately sets 2 great new PRs. He passed Dave Hines on the ARR rankings.
Wingert and Chen are still climbing. Wingert has reached King C and is still a few points ahead of Chen. Marc Bruton climbed 2 places in nonSC AvgFin.
Anton Forsander has climbed 5 spots on the ARR rankings, to reach a Master C rank. Doug Vervaet moved from #136 to #128 on the ARR list.

Tuesday, December 25, 2001 - PL Uploaded - by Kevin at 1:03 pm
Ok, pretty much reflects what you have been hearing lately. It only reflects through the 23rd, so next update, you are going to find that Tom Gaffikin is goin g to fly up the ladder. KB... Maybe not, but some serious progress will be made.

The Chen/Fairbourn/Wingert competition is getting excellent. All 3 of these players could eventually reach the legend ranking, and nearly at the same time, but time will tell, cause as you know, kart is one of those games where anything can happen.

Lars Nouwen continues to get strong times as a fresh Legend as he splits updating/SMK/kart 64 playing nicely.

As liem showed, alot of new players, and a big appology to those that didn't get a profile up til now. I will be emailing a couple people and see if they are still playing, and if not, you know the drill. Keep on Karting!

Sunday, December 23, 2001 - New profiles created - by Michael at 9:00 am
I just created 6 new profiles. Our last 2 members, Anton Forsander and Doug Vervaet, got their profile pages up. And 4 other people also didn't have a profile yet. These are the new profiles:

- Anton Forsander
- Doug Vervaet
- Jeffrey Fetzer
- Matt Wladyka
- Michael Poelzl
- Morgan Malm

- Top 100s, ARRs & AvgFins updated - by Michael at 7:28 am
Brent Wingert succesfully fended off an attack from Ruokai Chen. Five days ago Wingert had a very small lead over Chen in both ARR and Avg Fin stats. Chen has set some explosive PRs since then, and improved his nonSC stats significantly. However, Wingert is also having a remarkably strong week. As a result of all of this, Wingert has improved his leads over Chen again. The margin is still very small though.

Wingert has also driven some good Shortcut times. He climbed from #56 to #43 on the SC AvgFin rankings, and might be Elite at the next PL update.

Congrats go to Beau Fairbourn for reaching King F. It's a nice end of the year for him. When he gets back from holidays, he could look forward to climbing upwards from there.

Lars Nouwen hit an awesome time on Frappe Snowland flap. His 39"32 (32"70) is ranked #4 on PAL, and #13 overall!

And finally, we have 3 new members! Welcome to Doug Vervaet, Anton Forsander and Xavier San Giorgi. Forsander enters the ranks at an awesome Pro A rank and is #78 in the nonSC AvgFin rankings. Vervaet enters at #146 in the AvgFin rankings. Xavier San Giorgi only has 2 times now, but next update he'll have a complete set of 32 times, and we'll see where he ranks then.

Edit: Apparently, Wingert had a typo in one of his submissions. His actual MMF fastlap should be 1 full second faster. With that time, his lead over Chen is actually quite large. We'll see the exact numbers at next update.

Monday, December 17, 2001 - PL Updated - by Kevin at 4:39 pm
Anyhow, some moves here and there, as Liem said. Just would like to welcome Marc Bruton to Kart 64 Players. Elite D is a very nice placing for being a first time member. Not too many players start that high in the ladder, from the get go, that is for sure.

Next PL update, there will be another new member, and I shall announce them than.

- Top 100s, ARRs & AvgFins updated - by Michael at 1:32 pm
Welcome to Marc Bruton. This PAL player from Ireland has been playing MK64 for some time, and now he enters the site at a nice Elite D rank.
In other news, Ruokai Chen reached King D and is really closing in on Brent Wingert.

- POW done - by Lars at 1:06 am
This week POW award goes to.......me!!! It was a tight race between me and Chen (he almost passed me in Frappe flap!!!) but after some conversations with Kevin and Michael, we've decided that becomming a Legend is quite a special milestone for a karter and that this POW belongs to me :)

Sunday, December 16, 2001 - PAL & NTSC Rankings Updated - by Michael at 6:12 am
The "FS wars" has yielded nice results for Chen and Fairbourn. Fairbourn has finally entered the NTSC Worldranking page. And Chen managed to beat Wingert in that list.
On the nonSC Freak rankings, Lars Nouwen has passed Iacopo Sorce and Dave Crawford, and is tied with Dave Hines!
Other people also improved their ranks. Check out the pages, to see all rankings movements.

Saturday, December 15, 2001 - Top 100s, ARRs & AvgFins updated - by Michael at 12:43 pm
We have a new Legend Player. Congrats to Lars Nouwen for reaching this very high kart-rank, after a great week of karting!
The battle Wingert-Chen-Fairbourn is still going strong. Check the stats pages to see how they stand against eachother now.

- PL Updated + Extended news - by Kevin at 11:23 am
Well, you may think things are beginning to settle down, with the news of Louis Nebout retiring at Elite Status, and others scrambling around in the holidays, but this is definitely not the case.

First, we have the FS wars! Beau Fairbourn and Ruokai Chen trying to compete for who is going to get Legend first. Beau did beat him to this honor the morning before, with 33"19, but Chen is now ahead with 33"08, which even beats High Rated King, Iacopo Sorce!

Brent Wingert is another outstanding performer as of late. He is silently improving with sets of times, and looks to be one of the favorites to make Legend first, but hold the phone, we got some bigger news.

twilight karter1 (9:43:34 AM): i'm going for king b in a week and a half..

#()$#*$)(#*$#()$*@_#

He doesn't mean from now, but when he gets his new cable for his N64, he will start a 1.5 week long campaign, and promises to achieve a pace that would even make Neil Marsden and Ben Gorman raise a brow. I like to be optimistic, but this is an amazing claim, and I'm sure we will all be rooting him on, and ya, the new powerhouses of Chen, Fairbourn, Wingert and others will be trying to beat him to the punch!

And yes, now we have 2 active legends. Newly Legendized Lars Nouwen is really inspired to do great, and we will see what he hits next. Steven Zwartjes showed him a few things, so expect strong points, like in Sherbet Land. The 2nd legend, is of course, me. I've been working on shortcuts, and have hit some of the more recognized ones, as of late. Myle Style LR, WS, and Gallo's KD method have now been landed. I also only have one pre 2000 time left to take care of, but I have a feeling that won't be falling anytime soon.

Lastly, a quick welcome to a new meber. Welcome Morgan Malm to Kart 64 Players!

Tuesday, December 11, 2001 - Top 100s, ARRs & AvgFins updated - by Michael at 2:15 pm
Congrats to Ruokai Chen for reaching King F in style! Several new PRs put him deeply into King F level. He also passed Sterling Neblett, and his next target looks to be his rival Brent Wingert. During their race through the elite ranks, Wingert proved too strong for Chen. But maybe Chen can get a revenge now? For now, it seems Wingert is not going to let that happen too easily. He got some new PRs and reached King D.

Beau Fairbourn is still going strong. He cut another 0.5 points from his ARR score.

Lars Nouwen drove 2 high-quality PRs, that gave him a lot of AvgFin points. Legend F is getting closer and closer for him...

Kevin Booth got another SC PR. There's still a long way to go, but Kevin's slowly closing the gap with the top 6 on the shortcut rankings.

And finally, 2 new members have joined. Michael Polzl from Austria and Morgan Malm from Sweden. They both play on a PAL system. And they're fairly close to eachother in the ARR and AvgFin rankings. So they should have fun climbing the rankings against eachother.

- POW done - by Lars at 12:40 pm
This POW is the first one that I was allowed to reach out. It was a very strong week for our most active players Wingert, Fairbourn, Chen en Gaffikin, but Fairbourn made the most impressive pr's that week, so this POW goes to him. Congratulations and keep on this amazing karting!

Saturday, December 08, 2001 - PL Updated - by Kevin at 12:52 pm
Just a quick Players List Update based on times up til the 6th of December. I changed 3 links on the PL. Dave Crawford, Nicole Delinski, and Louis Nebout got their links changed. If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Next up to bat will be to fix the main pages links, and upload that soon, so stay tuned! Lastly, by next update, we may have a new member! A guy from Sweden may be joining the ranks soon.

Friday, December 07, 2001 - Top100s, ARRs & AvgFins Updated - by Michael at 1:41 pm
Ruokai Chen did a very nice job in this update. With some nice PRs, he took some distance from Balahura in AvgFinish. Chen's ARR score is getting very close to King F now. Beau Fairbourn improved his AvgFin and ARR stats by about the same margin as Chen. So, it's gonna be interesting to see if Chen can stay ahead.
Brent Wingert is steadily improving his nonSC stats. With an ARR of 9.500, he'll only need one more improvement to reach King D.
Tom Gaffikin has finally reached Elite! He would have passed Louis Nebout in AvgFin rankings. However, Louis prevented that by making some significant improvements as well.

In Shortcut, Kevin Booth got a 3"19 on Wario Stadium SC flap, passing 3 people. Alexandra Balahura passed a bunch of players on FS 3lap SC. He's approaching David Wonn on the AvgFin rankings.
Brent Wingert and Beau Fairbourn also had some SC PRs.

Saturday, December 01, 2001 - PL UPLOADED - by Kevin at 11:31 pm
I uploaded a Players list based on times get up to the middle of the 30th of last month. I also am working on fixing the new member pages, and the main page. More details on all of that very soon as I work to coordinate with the new team members.

- Top100/ARR/AvgFin Update (End of Month) - by Michael at 1:33 pm
The last week of November has ended. King Players Nouwen and Wingert did some useful work. Lars Nouwen passed Sorce to reach 25th place in nonSC AvgFin. Brent Wingert passed Sterling Neblett in AvgFin and ARR, and looks to be reaching King D soon.
In the high elite ranks we see 3 people who could join the King Ranks soon. Ruokai Chen improved almost a full ARR point to reach Elite A. Beau Fairbourn improved more than 2 ARR points and is now only one improvement away from Elite A. Alexandru Balahura also took off 2 full ARR points. He passed Chen, and is close to hitting King F.
Louis Nebout and Tom Gaffikin had their usual share of PRs.

Kevin Booth improved his shortcut stats with a Choco Mountain PR. Alexandru Balahura did an amazing job by beating Derek Clark and Steven Zwartjes for the 15th place in Shortcut AvgFin rankings!


- POW/POM done - by Kevin at 1:58 am
Well this may be the last time I decide POW/POM. Lars Nouwen may be taking over this and the timesheets very soon, but we are still in the planning stages for the new team. Beau Fairbourn, Lars Nouwen, and Ruokai Chen have volunteered their time to be a part of the action.

Anyhow, there were 2 favorites for the POW. Beau Fairbourn and Brent Wingert had a very strong week. POM was pretty much a one person race.