Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Players' Page

Proof Call wraps up

Derek @ Sunday, June 26th [link]

As some of you probably have started to notice, the "Proof" column on the rankings table is starting to fill up nicely. The call is effectively complete now, though I will continue to monitor fast-rising players, including some of the latest, highly-ranked immigrants from other ranks. The original call went out to 31 players, and here's how it broke down:

21 validated
6 removed
4 frozen

Three of the 4 frozen players will likely have proof for me any day now, and the fourth seems intent on making a return, and would make vids at that time. Of the 6 players removed, 4 were removed solely because they were completely unresponsive; of the other 2, one was highly suspicious, and the other immediately conceded removal after getting my email--fine by me.

A huge thanks goes out to Kieran Jessel, who aided me by relaying messages to and from the French message boards. Without his assistance, I really don't know what I would've done about certain players. And as usual, thanks also to Paul Tanney for his continued assistance throughout the process. That's all for now; I'll keep you guys posted.

Batman is good, go see it.

Alex @ Tuesday, June 21st [link]

Movement

#3 Marius Mollenhauer was the only player in the top four to make a positive change on his AF this week. Despite it being only 0.03, it did tip his AF score below 3 for the first time in quite a while (I don't remember the last time it was that low, if ever). At present, Marius' 2.96 A, compared to #1 Raphael Segas's 2.40 and #2 Jonathan Steel's 2.53 is possibly the closest top-3 we've ever had. These three players are a long way ahead of #4 Paul Maes, on 7.37.

Giving Paul Maes a run for his money is #5 Vince van der Fluit, who made up several weeks worth of lost ground over #6 Paul Tanney. Both players produced very impressive times this week (WRs and God times), but while Paul concentrated on ARR, Vince made 13 PRs and cut 1.6 AF points. This brings his AF to 7.93, putting him ahead of Paul again, and a strong chance of catching Paul Maes. On the other hand, Paul Tanney played only one track - DKM - and ended up improving both of his times there from Titan B to God. If you've been following the stats lately, you'll know that this put Paul on an ARR score of 0.0, making him the fourth God.

#8 Richard Karlsson feels at home again, having been reinstated recently, with a clean proof status. He made 8 new PRs and moved up two positions, to break into the top 10 once again. His next challenge is #7 Yannick Plebani (3 months inactive), who has a 2 AF point advantage. You can check out the rivalry between Maes, Tanney, v/d Fluit and Karlsson, which indicates just how close the first three are, with Karlsson catching up fast.

#11 Tristan Eyma passes #12 Trystan Pugh in the long-hotly-constest battle of the Tr_stans. Both of these players have been stuck back to back for weeks on end, with Eyma currently ahead. Although Trystan scored a few WRs this week, his overall AF worsened a little, allowing Eyma's 11 PRs from the past two weeks to level the scores. Their AFs stand at 14.84 vs 15.06, and it's currently 1.41 vs 1.44 in ARR. Both players made Titan A this week, by the way.

#15 Xavier Valentin too became Titan A, squeeing under the 1.5 ARR threshold by a hair. He is now tied with countryman #15 Jean Lecureaux in AF, after passing #17 Fernando Moritz dos Santos.

Friend-of-Marius Christian Kuklock holy smashed all of his times in secret (he has no Internet, so it was obviously secret). He's been smashing them for several months. The last update we have of his appears to be from December last year, so we can assume that he's been doing six months of smashing. In summary, Christian's 32 new PRs cut his AF in half (from 88 to 45), and place him just inside the top 50, at #44. Christian is inbetween some more-active Germans, such as #49 Ben Zeller and #39 Kris Will. If he had Internet and posted more frequently, this could have made an interesting rivalry.

#55 Rob van Zanten continues from last week's streak, adding another 8 new PRs to his tally of 25 for the month. He passed seven players, and looks set to breach the top 50 soon. In ARR he reached Hero C, and is currently tied on the same score as ex-champ #57 Cesar Martin.

#114 Marcel Felix and #118 Peter Toch both had large cuts (-15.0 and -9.4 respectively), pulling ahead in their rivalry. #120 Brock Courville and #121 Menno Kos are one position apart in AF and there is only 0.13 difference between their ARRs. Both players were active and positive progress for the week, but suffered from Marcel and Peter's PR frenzies - 18 for Marcel and 10 for Peter.

#125 Logan Delhez is giving Peter a challenge for the top Belgian spot, pounding away at all of the tracks and removing his weaknesses to have a consistent profile of 32 scores. Logan cut 5.5 off ARR (from around Intermediate A to Expert C, skipping Advanced A-D entirely), and jumping 30-odd positions in AF. Logan produced 26 PRs over the past two weeks for a 31 AF cut, and is currently 12 AF points shy of Peter.

Swede #140 Martin Rudmarker returned after a 12-month absence with 26 new PRs, cutting 40.5 AF points and passing 41 players. His 13-year-old brother Andreas has been reinstated at #113, after successful compliance with proof. Both Rudmarker brothers seem keen to get back into the action, posting PRs almost every day.

#203 Douwe Hogendoorn did a bit of catching up this week, trying to remain with his rivals. Douwe is currently one place behind #202 Mike Ruitenbeek, after cutting 8pts in AF to Mike's 3pts. #189 Enzio Fruijtier and #183 Dion de Graaf are presently second and first in the rivalry, though Enzio made up a bit of ground on Dion. Douwe and Mike should make it into the top 200 any day now, and hopefully continue to give us an exciting rivalry.

#232 Cameron Tanger is proving that he can be just as active with the controller as he is in the community message board. He emulated his 34 pt cut from last week with 33pts this week, moving up another 26 places in the process. Another solid week like this could seem him reach the top 200 before the end of the month (the last week of the month is a few days longer than the others).

New Records

Trystan Pugh started off the week with his best course, Mushroom Bridge. He already had top times here, but decided to improve them anyway. His new marks of 1'19"488 and 25"968 lead Raphael Segas and Jonathan Steel by 0.10 and 0.04, respectively.

Raphael broke both Rainbow records this week, 2'56"019 and 57"936. Many players have great potential on this track, so don't be surprised if it goes even lower.

Jonathan pulled one back in Yoshi Circuit with 1'41"020, leading Raphael by 0.3 and Marius Mollenhauer by 0.59. While Stefan van Dijke lost his Rainbow medals, Vincent can der Fluit salvaged some Dutch glory by taking the Mushroom City lap to a crazy low 31"299, leading all the Gods by over 0.15! A few days later, he snatched the course time from Raphael by one-hundredth of a second, with 1'35"890.

Vince had another trick up his sleave, snatching yet another record from under someone's nose - this time the Waluigi Stadium course time, with 1'38"724 over Jonathan's 1'38"76 from a month ago. The next best player for this track, Marius, is just on the wrong side of 1'39.

Last but not least, Emmanuel Debenest replied to the Dino Dino Jungle 1'43"08 challenge from Raphael earlier this week, with a 1'42"790 of his own.

New Players

Welcome to...

Sven Richter from Germany (Intermediate C, 322nd)
Andreas Rudmarker from Sweden (Expert B, 113rd)
Jonas Natanaelsson from Sweden (Advanced D, 255th)
Christopher Daigle from ??? (Beginner D, ~479th)
Christian Hjartmyr from Sweden (Newbie, ~507)
Jan Haye Klijnstra from the Netherlands (Beginner C, ~437th)
Thomas van Leeuwen from the Netherlands (Advanced B, 222nd)
Remi Taroni from France (Hero B, 51st)
Darby Drenzek from the USA (Newbie, ~507th)

New Movies

Marcel Felix (lots of new vids) here.
Andre Wachsmuth SL 1'15'4 24'19, MB 26'2, MCT 31'8, RR 2'58'2 58'5, DDJ 1'45'2, wc 1'59'8 59'2 here.
Kristopher Will WS 1'40'5, MCR 28'7 here.
Paul Tanney DKM 1'44'3 33'9 here.

Back and forth..

Alex @ Tuesday, June 14th [link]

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 smile

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! wink

#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.. smile

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 smile

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.

Uncertainty continues over the top spot..

Alex @ Wednesday, June 8th [link]

Movement

Jonathan Steel continues to hold off Raphael for the #1 spot, scoring 7 PRs this week, for a 0.18 cut to finish on 2.31. Raphael scored 6 PRs, but he was already the record holder for some of them, and didn't gain anything in the AF chart. Raphael ended up 0.06 less than last week, at 2.47. On the other hand, Raphael has a fair bit more WRs to his name.

#4 Paul Maes netted 8 PRs of his own, but they were quite important ones. His AF dropped by almost a whole AF point. He now leads #5 Yannick Plebani by 1.6pts.

The other Paul, #6 Paul Tanney made equally important cuts, cutting 1.03 pts. Last week, Paul narrowly snuck ahead of #6 Vincent van der Fluit, and Vincent has been busy catching up. Vince scored 6 PRs compared to Paul's 9, and managed a 0.84 AF cut. This means that Paul gained a small lead for the week, but Vince is clearly not letting him pass without a fight. Both players are very quickly gaining on #5 Yannick Plebani, who is about 0.3-0.5 AF points ahead of them. The rivalry has many points of interest.

#20 Mike Hartjens continues to add more victims in his not-so-little victims book. He added yet another Dutch name to it, having passed #23 Bart-Jenssen Bouwmeester this week. He overtook Rodolphe Gouet and Stefan Baczynsky, as well! #13 Luke Mulders, #10 Stefan van Dijke and #7 Vincent van der Fluit lie ahead.

#34 Bo Garman passed Jon Prentice, albeit by just 0.1 AF point, to become the US champ.

A strong return from #36 Yohann Ghignet, after a three-month absence. Yohann reported 20 new PRs for that lost time, most of them in the mid-high Titan region. All these new scored resulted in a 8.2 AF cut and a passing of 6 players, including countryman #37 Sylvin Rigal. He also made Titan D, entirely skipping Hero A in the process.

#50 David Lalo is on fire, with 28 PRs this week! He makes several submissions per day, so he must be determined to reach the top 50. He almost made it, too, landing right on the borderline. David is 2.5 points behind #49 Kenn Smith at present, having cut 12 point and passing 11 players (among them Simon Laflamme, Sam Hoar, Cesar Martin and Michael Fried).

Thirteen more PRs for #66 Robert van Zanten saw him overtake his fellow Duchies #69 Ivo van der Stap and #73 Vincent Zee. Rob was on a bit of a break, but started playing again on the last day of May, and has already passed 9 players. His other victims include Jeff Gutierrez and Rickard Lindell. Ivo is currently without a cube, so he will not be able to fight back for a little while.

#136 Arnaud Guepey scored his first Hero time this week, on LC lap. He scored another 12 more PRs, to pass 13 more players. We've already got three Arnauds in the top 100, and this guy might become the fourth by the end of the month.

Americans #151 Dan Furst and #152 Scott Goodell both shared some successes this week, passing a handful of players and each other. Dan made 11 PRs compared to Scott's 9, and managed to overtake him. Dan should make it in the top 150 any day now, with Scott to follow.

#155 Menno Kos is settling in quite comfortably in the rankings. He's learning how to make up lots of ground quickly, playing all the various tracks to even out his ranks. 30 of his times are either Expert C or D, and two of them are Expert B - he's consistent, isn't he? His 23 PRs, averaging 4 per day for the first five days of the month, saw him cut a chunky 24.0 pts, or 23 positions.

#207 Karl Anders made equally impressive cuts, totally 25.0 AF points. Karl joined last week, and is already 27 places higher. He should make it into the top 200 soon.

#239 Alan McGrath, who joined last week as well, is now where Karl debuted. Alan cut almost 43 points! Good start.. can he keep it up?

#256 Nathan Stinson had the second raw largest drop for the week, of almost 29 points. He is now just one position and 0.15 points from #255 Andrew Weatherton, a famous 64-karter.

Honourable mentions: #26 Andre Wachsmuth (Titan C), #27 Steven Zwartjes (Titan C), Alan DeLoriea (Titan D)

New Records

Lots of new records from the top 3 players this week.

Three of them were on the first day of the month, with Raphael Segas taking down the Daisy Cruiser lap to 31"747, 0.05 faster than Jonathan Steel's 3-month old time. Raphael also lowered his own DK Mountain course time to 1'44"183, increasing his lead over Jonathan Steel and Marius Mollenhauer to almost 0.30. Jonathan got one back in Yoshi Circuit - 32"601. Marius is in second place on this lap, with a 32"65 later in the week.

The following day, Jonathan tied Raphael's Sherbet Land lap of 24"089. Hopefully they will still play it to remove the tie smile

.

Marius Mollenhauer put claim to the Bowser's Castle lap, with his 45"284 proving to fast for Jonathan and Raphael. Marius leads them both by around 0.10, and all three players scored a PR on this course during this week (and Paul Maes was another).

David Schiering promised to fight for the Waluigi Stadium lap, and he managed to beat Jonathan's 31"41 from early May by more than 0.1, with a 31"297.

Raphael Segas rounded off this very successful WR week with another course record, this time for Mushroom City. His 1'35"902 is the only time under 1'36 on the chart, but Jonathan and Paul Tanney have run mid-low 1'36s recently, and may join him.

New Players

Welcome to...

Pontus Storm from Sweden (Titan C, 25th) - frozen for now.
Grinberg Colastra Milan from Spain (Advanced C, 241st)
Cameron Tangen from the USA (Intermediate A, 291st)
Jonathan Woffenden from the UK (Intermediate C, 324th)

New Movies

Paul Tanney MCT 1'36'3 31'5, BC 2'19'6, MCR 1'28'7 28'22, LC 1'15'9 24'69, MB 1'19'9 26'0 here.
Gregor Fran MCR 1'29'7 28'5 here.
Tristan Eyma DC 31'9, MCT 31'6 on his site (which is full of many other goodies).
Raphael Segas BC 45'38, MB 1'19'5 26'0, DC 31'7, MCT 1'35'9, DDJ 33'3, DDD 28'3 at Paco's.
Rodolphe Gouet DC 1'37'9 at Paco's.
Vincent van der Fluit WS 1'39'5, MCT 1'36'3 31'49 at Paco's.

A new Champ?

Alex @ Wednesday, June 1st [link]

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... rolls eyes

#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? confused

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 plain

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. razz

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? cool eh?

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! crazy

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).