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| 01 June 2005: "A new Champ?" |
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| Movement Unless you've been living in a cave for the past few weeks, would you have either seen or heard about Raphael Segas rising towards the top of the ladder. In fact, he did.. he was #1 for a couple of days! Jonathan Steel made a small comeback in the last few days of the month, to hang onto first place on the AF chart. Jonathan's 4 PRs helped maintain his AF at 2.50, finishing 0.03 worse than last week. Raphael's 5 PRs gained him 0.06, to close the month on a 2.53 AF score. Whoa, it's close! Raphael is active and hungry for WRs, and he's number one in most of the stats. But we all know that Jonathan probably has a few tricks in him, and seems to be doing just enough to stay ahead in AF for now. Raphael says that his holidays begin in a few days' time, so take your seats because the show is about the start. #3 Marius Mollenhauer has lowered his AF by five times Raphael's amount, and is pretty close to the 3.0 AF barrier. He scored 12 PRs, and, as usual, half of them were really close to WRs, but just barely missed. Must be something in the beer...  #4 Paul Maes has finally passed Yannick Plebani, to become the 2nd best Frenchman. Paul scored 7 PRs this week, of which 6 were God. He even got two WRs! All the activity among the top few places was lowering the stats of rest of the people in the top 10, and #6 Paul Tanney took advantage of it. He also scored 7 PRs, 6 God. The -0.8 change was the largest in the top 10 this week, and helped Paul pass #7 Vincent van der Fluit and #8 David Schiering in AF. In ARR, Paul cut an amazing 0.4 (almost halved his score) to have the lowest ARR from the mortals (i.e. not the three immortals). Paul's ARR is now 0.50, with Yannick Plebani, Paul Maes and Rene Bauer tied on 0.625 behind him. #9 Rene Bauer is a good friend of David Schiering in real-life, but we think they're becoming a too friendly in the charts.. Rene is one position behind David, at 11.06 vs 11.09 AF. Rene has already passed David in ARR; will he pass him overall as well?  Germany and France each have three players in the top 10 at the moment. The UK is close to doing it again, with #11 Trystan Pugh getting very close to #10 Stefan van Dijke. UK's Jonathan Steel and Paul Tanney are already in the top 10, and Trystan could be the third soon! Trystan's 5 PRs saw him pass #14 Jean Lecureaux and #13 Luke Mulders. His -1.5 AF change was just enough to stay ahead of #12 Trystan Eyma, who improved by 1.8 (and passed the same players as Trystan). Tristan is 0.03 ahead of Trystan in ARR, but both Tr_stans are only a few standards away from reaching Titan A. Tristan isn't afraid of Trystan, having been his shadow for the past few weeks, always just a tiny bit behind. Perhaps Tristan is biding his time, waiting to strike. Or maybe Trystan is purposefully crawling along at a slow pace, trying to anticipe Tristan's preemptive strike. It might help if their names were not so confusing  Both Tr_stans are active and will most likely pass Stefan soon, who has not been active for almost 5 month. But which one will get into the top 10.. the French or the British?#24 Mike Hartjens made up some ground on Bart Janssen-Bouwmeester, who is two places above him. Mike produced about 15 PRs, to top off his month with passing Alex Penev and reaching Titan C. #25 Cedric Willo is right behind Mike, scoring 13 PRs (including one God time). Cedric's huge 5.6 AF cut helped him pass #26 Alex Penev, #27 Julien Boisiaud and #28 Andre Wachsmuth. He's also Titan C now. #28 Andre Wachsmuth and #29 Steven Zwartjes casually strolled into the top 30 - a walk in the park for them. They each passed a handful of players, including #30 Prashant Bhoja and #31 Paul Regeffe. Andre and Steven are both within 0.1 from reaching Titan C. Surely #79 Alan DeLoriea is dominating his rivalry now, after a whopping 17 AF pt drop. He passed 16 players, and is a clear winner is all his rivalry stats. Alan became an Expert A this week, and is 8 standards away from being a Hero. Equally impressive was #105 Tobias Bauer's 18.3 pt AF improvement, improving about 13 places. Tobias returned after more than a month's absence with 25 new PRs. He is in a good position at the moment, sitting just outside the top 100. A good start to the new month could see him break the top 100 and pass ex-champ bart Savelkouls, amongst some other veterans. #113 Daniel Wittingham has caught up to fellow countryman #112 James Leare already! Needless to say, James had a nice week himself, commitedly reporting PRs each day - 20 all up. But Daniel beat some of his weakest times, and ended up improving three times as much as James with his 18 PRs. James and Daniel both made Expert B, and may soon pass ex-updater #111 Daniel Sloggett and MKDD-turned-MK64-pro #109 Tuomas Dunkel.  No doubt #118 Arto Jarvela wouldn't mind passing his Finnish buddy Tuomas, too. Arto is nine places behind Tuomas so far, who is trailing #107 Oskar Joutsijoki for the top player of Finland. Arto returned with 17 PRs after a two month absence. #149 Andreas Brilke continued from where he left off from last week. Having been promoted to Expert, Andreas cut a further 15 AF points and 12 places to finish inside the top 150! #155 Scoll Goodell, #160 Jake Sopcak and #165 Romuald Androus are trying to follow suit, each with hefty cuts (-19, -22 and -20 respectively) and getting much closer to the top 150 mark. #176 Ben Goldberg made a massive 55.5 point drop! Besides the obvious 50-odd place shift in the ladder, Ben skipped a whole rank by cutting 2.2 pts in ARR to become Advanced A. It's a shame, though, that he ended up so close to skipping another rank.. only four standards stay in his way. Ben's efforts were emulated with a tee by newcomer #179 Menno Kos. Menno chopped off an equally sizeable 54.9 pt slab off his AF, also improving around 50 places. He ended up one place behind famous Eliter #178 Chris Rayola. Menno actually managed to pass Ben in ARR by 0.06 pts, but he also finished on Advanced A and missed the next promotion (Expert D) by two standards. #216 Douwe Hogendoorn had the biggest drop of the week, of 77 AF pts. Douwe joined at around #370 at the end of April, and in a month's time is close to halving that rank. Keep it up. Germany's #221 Alexandra Haemmerling passed Australia's #224 Rachel Fanta this week. Is Alex the best? You know, the best girl?  It would seem that #194 Stacy Needham is a girl. There are some other feminine-sounding names, but I don't think they are actually girls (Tory, Casey, etc). So, can anyone confirm how many girls are ahead of Alexandra?Honourable mentions: Gregor Fran, Alejandro Hernandez, Kristopher Will, David Lalo, Iain Havard, Arnaud Teil (top 100), Marcel Felix, Peter Toch, Florent David, Mike Ruitenbeek. New Records Two WRs each for two French players, both on different courses. Paul Maes has broken both LC records, costing Jonathan Steel two WRs. In the course time, his 1'15"695 beats the old record by just 0.03. A total of six players have under 1'16. Paul's lap time of 24"552 bested Jonathan's 6-month old record by almost 0.07!  Raphael Segas has also thrown a few spanners into Jonathan's works, taking both of the DKM records. Raphael is using the Barrel Train for this course, so scroll down to the New Movies section and have a look at how he does it. His times were 1'44"307 (0.15 margin) and 33'751 (0.08 margin). New Players Welcome to... Karl Anders from Germany (Advanced C, 234th) Alan McGrath from Scotland (Intermedia A, 275th) Nico Scheltinga from the Netherlands (Newbie, ~518th) Timo Sluijter from the Netherlands (Beginner C, 380th) Jack Richardson form the UK (Newbie, 385th) New Movies Vincent van der Fluit DC 31'9 at Paco's. Raphael Segas DKM 1'44'3 also at Paco's (33'75 lap). Trystan Pugh MB 1'19'6 also at Paco's. Andre Wachsmuth has a new site with truckloads of Titan/God goodies. Kristopher Will BP 8'80 on his site. Paul Tanney SL 24'19 1'15'3, WS 1'39'6 31'45 on his site. Gregor Fran BP 1'05'9 8'76, DDD 1'33'4, MB 1'21'1 26'4 on his site. Marcel Felix has added a ton of movies to his site too (mostly Expert scores). |