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| 14 June 2005: "Back and forth.." |
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| Movement Note: Several players have been removed by the recent proof call. They're more then welcome to join again, of course. The players were, according to my calculations: Evan Giampa, Anthony Nguyen, Fritsch Jeremy and Marcus Mathews. As a result, many people's AF scores improved. Having swapped the lead back and forth a few times, this week #1 Raphael remained on top, leading #2 Jonathan Steel by 0.1 in AF. Their scores are 2.25 vs 2.34. Raphael scored 4 PRs and Jonathan 6 PRs. Raphael broke a few barriers in terms of total times, such as sub-26'20 for course totals (Jonathan and Marius both on 26'22) and sub-35 for combined lap+course totals (Jonathan and Marius both on 35'01). Let's see how things continue unfold. #3 Marius Mollenhauer was too busy this week partying for finishing his last-ever school exams, playing SM64, and just generally recovering from hangovers. Despite this, he actually drives quite well when drunk, as demonstrated by his modest collect of 8 PRs, including two new LC PRs. He lowered his AF to 3.00 on the spot, which is 0.7 behind Jonathan. #4 Paul Maes scored himself a handful of PRs as well (mostly God), enough to show us that he's alive, but it was the other Paul who raised more eyebrows. #5 Paul Tanney passed both #7 Yannick Plebani and #6 Vince van der Fluit, cutting 0.7 from AF. He is currently 1.5 point behind Maes. More importantly, Paul cut his ARR in half by beating another couple of God standards, and has 2 left - both DKMs. Maes is still strongly leading his rivalry, but Paul has certainly made progress. If you paid close attention to that last paragraph, you would have noticed that Vince has passed Yannick as well! Sure, only by 0.03, but Vince will probably increase this margin soon. What a sneaky guy... #10 Richard Karlsson has been reinstated, after sending his memory card (full of ghosts) to Tanneyville. Paul has races the ghost and confirmed that Karlsson's ghost are good enough evidence. The 15yr old Swede was removed because of proof issues quite a while ago. His reintroduction places him at 10th spot, pushing Trystan Pugh and everyone else one position lower. In ARR, Richard is on 0.93, which is Titan A. #18 Rodolphe Gouet and #19 Mike Hartjens have broken the top 20, by overtaking #20 David Grard, #21 Olivier Lavenant and #22 Emmanuel Debenest. Mike's 13 PRs were outnumbered by Rodolphe's 22 PRs, which is why Rodolphe ended up passing Mike too. Rodolphe was away for a couple of months, though, so he's been practicing in secret  Both players reached Titan B.#23 Andre Wachsmuth worked on some of his weaker tracks, to lower his ARR. He certainly did a good job, cutting 0.5 point for just 7 PRs. Andre passed Kyle Clayton, Stefan Baczynsky, Bart Janssen-Bouwmeester and Cedric Willo in the process. #28 Stevan Zwartjes has passed Alex Penev this week. Starting from scratch, it took Steven a couple of months to do it. But it's taken the other players ahead of him a lot longer than that. So if Steven is breathing down your back.. be afraid!  #37 Yohan Foog seems to be after #31 Bo Garman's US crown. As you may remember, Bo passed Jon Prentice recently. Snapping out of a two month slumber, Yohan has started submitting again, scoring 10 PRs in the past few days. Yohan is 3 AF point behind and could make up that difference in a couple of weeks, unless he runs out of Knoxville puns first. Bo Garman did his bit this week, passing #32 Prashant Bhoja, #33 Paul Regeffe and #34 Yoann Seznec. Rumour has it that Bhoja may kart again soon... #46 David Lalo wanted to prove a point of some sort against some guy, so he went on a PRing spree, netting a total of 18, all in the high Titan to low Hero region. David's AF dropped by 9 whole points, to easily make it into the top 50. Cool battle between the two highest-ranked Finns, Oskar Joutsijoki and Arto Jarvela. Last week, Arto was 11 places behind Oskar, and this week they are neck and neck, ranked #103 and #104. Who is winning? Looks like Oskar is, for now. By how much? Well, in AF it's Oskar 110.5 vs 110.9. In ARR, Oskar 9.96 vs 10.03. In head-to-head matchups, Oskar is 17-15, kicking Arto's butt in courses (12-4), and getting his own kicked in return in laps (5-11). Arto has some good momentum going, cutting off 21 points this week, and you would be silly not to back him, even if he's trailing for now. Oskar admits that he is having some trouble taking down Arto's records (pretty much anything in the special cup). Oskar needs to apply pressure to both Arto and to #104 James Leare just ahead of him, who also wants to get into the top 100. #106 Daniel Sloggett has made a return to the game, after AWOL for over a year. Some interesting stats about Daniel is that he's one of the players with more comments for his times, since they're so darn old. Plus, his PID is pretty slow.. 16! That means that he was in the top 20 in LC 3lap at one stage! There's only two active players with lower, and they are Paul Tanney and Derek Clark. For whatever silly reason, Daniel thinks we've all forgotten about him, but obviously he didn't read last week's news, where I mention his name. Anywho, Daniel's priorities now are to regain some of his old skills. For starters, getting back into the top 20 might be nice. Um, well ok, how about we start with the top 100, instead? Baby steps.. He's already halved his distance to reach the top 100 in a few days, so he'll have no trouble with that.#112 Rob Gwynn-Jones has been playing in secret for a few months, scoring 23 PRs and passing almost 30 players! We're not sure when we'll hear from Rob again, but he could well be top 100 by then. No far behind is #123 Menno Kos, who had cuts of similar proportions. Menno is PRing every day, and produced 23 for the past week alone. This helped him jump 25-odd places, right into fellow Dutchman #122 Arno Bats. Menno has been improving consistently for a couple of weeks now, and this was just another day at the office. Expect more. Upon popular demand, I've added a new rivalry for some of the Duchies - #208 Mike Ruitenbeek, #184 Dion de Graaf, #216 Douwe Hogendoorn and #198 Enzio Fruijtier. For the moment, Dion has a handy lead, and is first in each of the stats. But this may well motivate the other three to play harder, who are not far off each other. #253 Cameron Tangen has passed the half-way mark in the charts, with a chunky 34 points drop in AF. He's kind of new, so improving half of his PRs is not a world's first, but some of neighbours are certainly noteworthy - Nathan Stinson fifteen odd places above, Andrew Weatherton one place higher, and Karel van Duijvenboden a few places behind. They're each famous karters, though perhaps not best known for MKDD. But hey, a win is a win. #313 Ryan Allen is in a similar situation. Only just starting this week, he's already jumped 50 places. Of course, he improved 32/32 PRs His neighbours include Jonathon Halford and Tom Gaffikin.Honourable mentions: #60 Robert van Zanten, #100 Nicolas Huver, #119 Arnaud Guepey, #142 Romuald Androus, #210 Alan McGrath. New Records Five WRs this week, from the two people who "need" them the least. Jonathan Steel started the week with some jaw-dropping Dry Dry Desert times - 1'31"053 for the course and a 28"17 for the lap. Jonathan is now leader Raphael Segas by 0.3 and 0.15 for these two charts respectively, with Paul Maes and Marius Mollenhauer taking the bronze. Seems like everyone was playing Yoshi Circuit this week, with Karlsson, Maes, Mollenhauer, Segas and Steel each scoring a 1'41 on this course within the past 10 days. Steel's was fastest from the group with 1'41"032, leading Segas by 0.35 and Mollenhauer by 0.6. Segas had the last laugh in YC, however, taking the lap record on the final day of the week with a 32"509. Steel had set a "545 only two days earlier. Rapha took another on that same day, edging out Stefan van Dijke's 5-month-old Rainbow Road time of 2'56"6 with a 2'56"305. Raphael also made a PR for a lap of 57"97, but missed out on Stefan's WR of 57"96. We hope that this may motivate Stefan to come back and kick some butt. New Players Welcome to... Richard Karlsson (reinstated; ranked 10th). Ryan Allen from the USA (Intermediate C, 313rd). Alexandre Vaesken from France (Advanced C, ~244). Benoit Boudreau from Canada (Intermediate A, ~294). Felix Gougeon from France (Beginner A, 359th). Suzanne DeLoriea from the USA (Newbie, ~387th). Max Marchitello from the USA (Beginner C, ~431). New Movies Paul Tanney PB 1'09'0, DDJ 1'44'3 33'5 here. Kristopher Will YC 1'43'2 33'3, SL 1'16'0, RR 3'00'4, BC 46'4 here. Raphael Segas YC 32'59 at Paco's. |