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Who likes McNuggets?

Alex @ Saturday, July 22nd   [link]

Movement

Richard Karlsson's reign as been put on pause for now, with Hendrik Bunde taking back the #1 position. #1 Hendrik scored one G+1 and five Myth+ times, for a 0.4pts AF drop. At the same time, #5 Marius Mollenhauer and #3 Vincent van der Fluit scored 4 and 9 PRs each, to lay the hurt on the inactive top players.

Vince was closing in on #3 last week, lacking 0.2 AF pts, and Hendrik was 0.3pts away from #1. The shake-up this week saw #2 Richard fall by 0.38, giving Hendrik the title (with a 0.5pt lead now). #4 Raphael Segas was hurt by 0.35, while Vincent's 0.5 improvement from his many PRs gave him the 3rd spot! Vince has a 0.7 cushion against Raphael now, but instead of worrying about what's behind him, he will look forward at the 0.2pts he needs to reach #2 Richard...

#5 Marius remained steady for the week, neither gaining nor losing. He stands to benefit from Raphael's injuries, as Marius is now 0.3 behind the Frenchman. Richard is still top in ARR, with 1.58 (Myth A). Hendrik's 1.62 is next, with Marius and Vince each going sub-2.

All that stuff above means that several of the top positions were exchanged this week, and they could change again by next week! crazy


The next big mover was #6 Aron Langerak. He was 9th, but scored 21 PRs over the past 3 weeks. This gave him a 3.0 pt AF cut, with which Aron charged right through Paul Maes, Jonathan Steel and Tristan Eyma, finishing in 6th. #5 Marius is safe for now, since Aron needs 2.5 AF pts to catch him. Aron became the 6th Myth A player, after a nice 0.6 cut in ARR.

#17 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate made a minor 0.4 AF cut with 5 PRs, passing the trio of Frenchman. He was already ahead of #20 Yannick Plebani at the end of last week, but now he also passed #19 Xavier Valentin and #18 Cedric Willo. This makes JSX the 5th best Frenchie. Next up is #10 Oliver Peruch, who is looking a long way ahead.

#37 Marijn Jongbloed cut 3.5pt to see his AF score dip under 40.0. He passes #39 Jonathan Eyma and former champ #38 David Grard with his 10 PRs. For short-term goals, he's not far from #35-36 Christian Kuklok and Emmanuel Debenest, and will reach them if he keeps his pace. For longer term, the next Dutchie ahead of him is #30 Stefan van Dijke, who is 8 AF pt ahead. Marijn became Titan B this week.

Newly appointed Hero A, #66 Andre Overesch made the best of the tight bunching-up in players ahead of him... by passing them all. He scored a 5pt AF cut to pass 7 players, including #72 Dave Taylor and #70 Pobry Gutierrez. Andre is creeping up behind two compatriots, Germans #63 Ben Zeller and #62 Michael Duerr. Michael passed Ben this week, so maybe he will take on Andre's challenge.

#97 Konsta Jukka is making Finland proud now, with another big week (14 PRs) and big cut (9.2 AF pts) for yet another week. How many weeks in a row so far? Pretty much since he joined 5 weeks ago at ~190. He moved up 13 places this week, breaking into the top 100. And he doesn't seem to be slowing down much, so we'll have to see what his real potential is. Konsta became Hero C this week, making the cut by just two standards. Due to Konsta's movement, Piet den Dulk slipped off his favourite and comfortable top-100 fence, back to #101.

Dutch action inside the top 200 sees #168 Marc Schwartz cutting 29pts in AF, due to 18 PRs. He moved up 30 places with these, assuring his top-200 placing. His PRs were mostly Exp B, and he reached Exp B in ARR.
In the same region, #180 Jerrol Hoppenbrouwers is catching up to his son Flynn, thanks to a 8.5 AF cut. Jerrol would have passed Flynn, had it not been for Flynn's 4pt cut! Flynn moved up to #177, so now there are only two players separating the pair. I guess this means that they are close enough now to have a good rivalry... so no more holding back, Flynn!

Again in the same region, but not Dutchies this time, USA's #191 Robert Chastain and #193 Robert Szabo both reached the top 200. Robert S had a 9pt AF cut, which would normally count for 9 positions, but he passed 15 players since they're all bunched up near the 200th spot. Definitely got his money's worth from his 9 PRs. Rob C joined a little later than Rob S, but scored twice as many PRs (18 of them). With his huge 24pt cut, C overtook S by just two places. It could be a fun rivalry between C and S, if they keep it up. C reached Exp C, but S was already Exp C smile

Dutchie #224 Omar Al-Azhar reported for the first time in about a month. His 17 new PRs gave him a 32pt AF cut, moving up 20 places. He's now one place behind Dutchie #223 Enzio Fruijtier, though a similar-sized cut need week will easily see him break into the top 200. His 1.0pt ARR cut was enough to make him the newest Expert player, at Exp D. We have 254 Expert-or-better players now.

Last week, #269 Scott Abbey reached 426th spot with a 120pt drop and 32 PRs. "It's his first week, so it's no big deal." This week, he made even sillier numbers show up on the table, with a 139pt AF drop, probably the largest we've ever had. As you'd expect, he had 32 PRs again. He improved almost 160 positions with those. Like last week, he pretty much jumped 4 ranks in ARR. He is now Adv A. Maybe some of you are thinking "it's his second week, still no big deal, talk about the jelly wrestling instead." Maybe. Let's see what he decides to do to finish off the month. Oh, and yeah, about the jelly wrestling. Well, the blonde girl threw some lemon jelly into the brunette's face, and called her a "tart". No, the brunette was not pleased about that, and lunged at the blonde, grasping at her long hair, and both of the girls fell to the ground and...

Scott's huge improvement would have looked a lot cooler if #320 Cole Gilbert hadn't been around. The Canadian had a 122pt AF drop of his own, narrowly surpassing Scott's debut last week in improvement magnitude. Cole was about 200 positions worse than he is now when he joined a month ago, but only now did he really fire up. Cole jumped 4 ranks in ARR, from Int B to Adv B.

There was lots of action around ~350 last week. This week it was more quiet, with several of the players not reporting (maybe they're saving up and hiding their progress from each other). This week, #346 Richard Turenhour made a small cut, and #347 Hans ter Haar caught up to him. There are large AF gaps between #345 and #348, so these two players didn't gain much in terms of position. Hans did become Adv C, however.

In his first week here, Darius Austin cut 32 AF pts to finish exactly on 500th spot. #508 Slaketo Flake, who joined last week, cut 49 AF pts to move up 40 places. Will they fight it out together? They both became Intermediate players with their cuts this week, at Int D.


New Records

There were 4 new overall records this week. Three came from Germany, one from Netherlands.

Aron Langerak made the run for the Dutch, beating Richard Karlsson's 27"98 on Mario Circuit with a 27"943. It's 0.04 faster than Richard's God time from a month ago, but Aron's is G+1! In this same week, both Vincent v/d Fluit and Hendrik Bunde produced a 28"003 to tie for 3rd place here, but they just missed out on the God time.

The other three were from Hendrik Bunde. As I mentioned above, he also played Mario Circuit. He didn't get the lap record, but he got the 3lap record: a 1'27"842, a Myth+ time. Vincent got a Myth+ time of 1'27"96 (a WR, earlier in the week), leaving Richard (1'28'00) in third spot.

The other two records were both on Rainbow Road. It was a course which the top players had forgotten about for some time. Hendrik scored a 2'55"524 (Myth A) on the 3lap here. Marius Mollenhauer got 2nd place and a new 60Hz record with 2'56"000, miraculously missing out on a 2'55. He did beat Raphael by "019, though, pushing him down to 3rd. On Rainbow lap, Hendrik's new time of 57"736 is 0.07 faster than Marius's new 60Hz 57"808 record. Those times are Myth+.

Will Rainbow receive more attention from the top players? Vince also scored new RR times, but he had to settle for 6th and 7th. Karlsson and Raphael might have to make a comeback here... Raphael's times are from 13 months ago, so he has been neglecting RR for some time.


Apart from Marius's two records above, there were a few others set in 60Hz. Marius also improved the Yoshi Circuit records to 1'41"396 and 32"524, both Myth A. The course time is only 0.1 faster than Olivier Peruch, and 6th overall. The lap time is just 0.07 behind the overall WR, and is 3rd overall, and 0.1 faster than Olivier.

Finally, Olivier Lavenant scored a 1'04"782 in Baby Park. It's Myth+. There's another three 60Hz players under 1'05, the next best being Marius with 1'04"92. It seems like a pretty big lead...


New Players

Welcome to...

Darius Austin, UK, (500th, Int D)

Hmm, don't wanna wait another 4 years... the WC should be every year! Best idea ever.

Alex @ Saturday, July 15th   [link]

Voting

If you haven't been here the past week, this news might push some important notices down... but scroll down to see that there's a new POQ vote for the Player of the Quarter award, and the Karter Contest 2006 (the funny picture above).


Movement

#2 Hendrik Bunde reported two scores this week, both WRs (see later). They resulted in a small 0.15 cut in AF, which see him trail #1 Richard Karlsson by 0.3pts. Not very much. Another person who is not very much away from someone is #4 Vincent van der Fluit, who has closed down the gap between him and #3 Raphael Segas to just 0.2 AF pts - a couple of new PRs should be enough!

#12 Rene Bauer and #14 Andreas Rudmarker had very small AF improvements, but their highlight for the week was ARR, where both reached Myth C! Their scores are 4.42 and 4.47, which beat the 4.5 requirement.

New Myth, #19 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate, passed #20 Yannick Plebani, #21 Luke Mulders, #21 Olivier Lavenant and #22 Mike Hartjens, to finish inside the top-20. His 3pt AF cut was enough to pass the tight group. He now has two more Frenchmen ahead of him in Cedric Willo and Xavier Valentin, so the fun is not over yet!

#55 Thomas van Leeuwen briefly scored a couple of PRs, enough to pass #56 Jon Prentice and make it look like he's revitalised his quest for top-50 (he needs about 5 AF pts), but he also said that he's off for some holidays and might not be able to play for several weeks. Looks like top-50 will have to wait a bit longer. He did get his ARR below 10.0, though, and he's right that it look a lot better.

#73 Andre Overesch and #74 Thomas Lander seem to be engaged in a little battle. Andre has been rising a little bit each week for quite a while now, and this week's 2.8 pt improvement in AF saw him pass Thomas (he was directly behind him last week, now directly in front). Thomas has noticed this already, though, so he's aware that he's got a rival. He raced a pair of PRs himself. Not enough to hold off Andre, but enough to keep it close - they're only 0.4 apart.

#110 Konsta Jukka is having quite a good week, with a hefty 11.4 pt cut. That required 15 PRs on his part, which is impressive. He's already a Finland #1 for weeks now, but there's still goals to be reached: such as the top 100, and Hero... no, wait, he's too fast for me. He already got Hero D, this week! That makes him the newest Hero. So his next goal is Titan =) #111 Christophe Cosentino, one place behind Konsta, didn't do too bad either, and passed two more players this week (#112 Tobias Suender and #113 Roman Tio).

Both the Hoppenbrouwers are hopping along nicely. #181 Flynn is still waiting for his dad to catch up, and only passed 3 players this week. Jerrol is trying to make up the ground, getting past 4 players, and sort-of-kinda-maybe reaching the top 200. It'd be better if he got 199th, but we know he's not about to stop just yet, so he'll do it next week.

#216 Robert Chastain and #229 Rhodri Morgan were both big movers, with the tip of the top-200 hill in sight. Robert's 19 PRs shows he's got plenty of gas in the tank, passing 8 players for this week. He also snuck past the next standard threshold by one standard, making him Expert C. Rhodri was MIA last week, but 21 new PRs over the last 6 days helped him pass 13 players. At this pace, both of these guys should reach the top-200 by the end of the month.

Newcomers and older players alike bring life to the middle of the table, with large cuts from 5 players who are situated within 15 spaces of each other. #345 Francis Schiering and #343 Kevin Cook have been around for a while. Francis reported 24 new PRs, after a full year away, but has been getting some tips from bother #11 David. He cut 32 pts and moved up about 30 places. #343 Kevin did even better, scoring 26 PRs since last month, for a huge 54 pt cut and 48 places. Right between Francis and Kevin is #344 Richard Turenhout, who joined only recently. His 25 PRs and 42pt cut helped him overtake Francis, as well as 34 other players. His timesheet is now quite consistent, with all 32 scores ranging between Adv A and Adv D!
#35 Jeff Kottcamp is only 8 places behind the above trio, netting a 15 pt AF cut with 17 new PRs. It served as a preemptive move against #358 Hans ter Haar, who finished up five places behind Jeff thanks to a 29 pt cut (28 PRs!).
In that group, Kevin, Richard and Francis all became Advanced C players, while Hans left the Intermediates for Advanced D. Jeff was already Adv D, but closed the gap on reaching C.

#426 Scott Abbey made one of the largest weekly cuts we've ever had: a 119.8 pt drop in AF. It's his first week on the ladder, so we should expect him to fly up, but maybe not quite so fast. Of course, he improved all 32 of his PRs. He cut 3.5 pts in ARR, going from Beginner A to Intermediate B. But since he's just one standard away from becoming Int A, we might as well say he jumped 4 ranks in a week ;D

Honourable mentions: #390 Jacob Mcmillin (top 400), #523 Rob Blanchard.


New Records

There were two new records this week, both in Rainbow Road and both by Hendrik Bunde. His new 3lap of 2'56"016 is 0.003 faster than Raphael Segas, which is insanely close for such a long level (only 0.001%). Both Hendrik and Raphael have a Myth A score here, while the next best (Stefan van Dijke's 2'56"6) is Myth B.
Hendrik's 57"918 lap is 0.02 faster than Raphael, but there are four players under 58" seconds (all Myth A times), so they don't have a big lead.


New Players

Welcome to...

Sean Sullivan, USA (492nd, Int D)
Slaketo Flake, USA (548th, Beg B)

Player of the Quarter

Alex @ Thursday, July 13th   [link]

The POQ (Player of the Quarter) for April+May+June 2006 is now available for voting.

As usual, I've done some calculations for the best AF and ARR improvements for that 3-month period. The only person added in who wasn't here for the full period was Andrew Math... there are probably some other new players who were introduced in the middle of the quarter who may have also had nice percentage cuts (they'd know who they are), but they were not mentioned in the forum so they wouldn't be one of the favourites in the running sad But yeah anyway, go vote. And vote in the Karter Contest, too! rolls eyes

My Prediction... er, no, Meakings' prediction: Cannavaro suffers a penalty, Buffon saves, Barthez blunders, Italy snatch a win, and Holy Moly streaks.

Alex @ Saturday, July 8th   [link]

Kart Contest

If you haven't visited the site recently, there's a new Karter Contest. My cute banner up on top of all the kart pages should give it away. See the "news update" below this one for details regarding what the contest is about.


Movement

#1 Richard Karlsson is still a little bitter then Sweden didn't get further than Germany and France, so extended his lead a little bit, scoring 4 PRs. Two of those were God. Richard managed to lower his ARR by 0.04 to 1.58 now, which is less than 1/10th of an ARR point away from Myth+! #2 Hendrik Bunde and #3 Raphael Segas are still inactive, perhaps biding their time to see how far Richard can go before they strike back. The rest of the top 10 remained steady, losing between 0 to 0.09 max in AF, which is quite steady.

#12 Rene Bauer scored a new lap in BP, which seems to be his first PR since having his times reinstated 2 months ago. He's 1.2 AF pts behind #11 David Schiering, who also made a BP improvement last week. Two spots behind Rene, #14 Andreas Rudmaker decided to play some Wario Colosseum, where he scored 3rd and 4th place in the course/lap with Myth+ times. He made up some ground on #13 Fernando Moritz dos Santos in AF, but is still 0.6 pts behind him.

#40 Marijn Jongbloed has squeezed between two compatriot Dutchies, #39 Bart Janssen-Bouwmeester and #41 Steven Zwartjes. As well as Steven, he passed #42 Michael Galan and #43 Stefan Baczynsky this week.

The game of catch-up continues in the mid-Hero ranks, with #74 Andre Overesch cutting 5 AF pts and moving past 4 players. #79 Andrew Math jumped 3 places of his own thanks to a 3.2 pt AF cut, and is now where Andre was last week. #84 John Hornick jumped 3 places of his own thanks to a 3.8 pt AF cut, and is now where Andrew was last week. Andre became Hero B this week, while Andre already was, and John fell a little short of the threshold.

#116 Konsta Jukka is riding on the last week's wave, with about 1/5th the size of AF cut this time (7.5 AF pts), but still more than most people in his region. He improved by 7 places in AF, and is only a few standards short of becoming a Hero.

#170 Ewan Stephens has reported 12 new PRs after a few weeks away. They resulted in a 29pt AF cut for the UK player, but he was 199th anyway, so no barrier broken there. Improving almost 30 positions is still pretty good, and as you'd expect, the ARR cut involved would probably be enough to get you a new rank; in Ewan's ase, he's now Expert B.

#205 Jerrol Hoppenbrouwers is closing in on the top-200, improving by 9 positions this week, passing Karter Contestant #206 Robert Szabo, as well as fellow Dutchie #207 Niels Duijvesteijn. His little boy Flynn is still 20 positions ahead. Another Dutchie is trying to steal the spotlight from Jerrol in the 200-mark region. #209 Marc Schwartz reached Expert C this week, and cut 14 pts from AF to jump 15 places. The best-ranking times Jerrol and Marc have are 124th and 138th, while the worst are 294th and 301st, respectively. That's a pretty big gap, so both players have many courses to tackle. They seem a little too equal, and although Marc made the larger cut this week, he also joined sooner. I have no idea who will get to 200 first.

An outside chance to be first is #223 Robert Chastain, whose 17pt AF cut pushed him 14 places up. A similar cut next week could see him reach the top 200 himself, but that's assuming Jerrol and Marc won't play.

Two of the recent additions, both Dutch, are getting into the karting spirit with large cuts, both of almost 60 AF pts. #379 Richard Turenhout joined last week and has jumped 57 positions (he is one place behind SMK Champion #378 Karel van Duijvenboden), while #391 Hans ter Haar was 620th when he joined a month ago, and only completed his timesheet 2 weeks ago, passed 60 players. Obviously, they both made the top 400 this week with those cuts. But they're not quite over the half-way mark yet... we have 758 players, so Richard is exactly on the half-way mark, but is "over" it smile

#429 Cole Gilbert matched the Dutch movers with his own 55pt cut in the name of Netherl... oh, Canada (his home and native land). Cole joined two weeks ago, and is still trying to strike a balance with his times and what track he should play---his best position is 276th in BP, but his worst is twice that, at 542nd in BC. If just one letter makes 300 ranks' difference, don't expect Cole to settle down any time soon. He reached Intermediate B this week, but he's probably "just visiting".

Two of the most-most-recent additions, #533 Rob Blanchard and #542 Scott Abbey, were also active. They're probably just getting warmed up, but we'll see how they go.

Honourable mentions: #316 Alex Moon (Adv B).


New Records

After the flurry of records last week, all of our WR-setters were resting this week to preparing for the big World Cup matches in the next 2 days.


New Players

Welcome to...
Scott Abbey, USA (542nd, Beg A)

Karter Contest 2006

Alex @ Wednesday, July 5th   [link]

You can probably tell that there's a new banner added to the top of the main page. The "Karters Contest 2006" is starting! We had one in 2004, so if you were around back then, you should be familiar with it.

If not... the Contest is a popularity competition ("election") across all the Time Trial sites (this MKDD page, as well as MKDS, SMK, MK64 and MKSC). If you are a member of our community, you can vote. To be a member, you just need to have joined the site already, or be a regular on the forum. In each of the matches (there will be around 70 of them), you should vote for whoever you like more... be it for their karting ability, historical influence, interesting forum contributions, or maybe they're just fun to chat with. The winner from each match progresses, since it's an elimination competition. Think of it as the Kart World Cup. (But it's much more exciting than the real World Cup!)

For information on how to vote, or if you want to see the full bracket of all the matches and instructions on how to lodge your prediction for all the matches, click the banner to visit the subforum created for this major karting event. It only takes a few seconds to vote, so if you've spent a few seconds of your life as part of this community, you can give back a few seconds of your time. The first match is a play-in match between a non-MKDDer and a former Champion at MKDD, so maybe your decision will be biased. That's perfectly reasonable. But for some matches, you may not know the two candidates, since they could be from the other MK sites. To get more background info on candidates, click their name to see their bio.

Oh, and tell your other karting friends about it, so they can also vote!

France is going better and better with each game. Maybe they'll score 5 goals in the next match, and 10 in the final?

Alex @ Saturday, July 1st   [link]

Movement

If you've been following the Message Board lately, you'd know that a new champion contender has surfaced. Richard Karlsson was always quite high ranked, but this weeks' incredible 20-PR surge has cut his AF by 2.75pts, to 4.21. This puts Richard in the #1 spot. #2 Hendrik Bunde sits on an AF score of 4.5, and #3 Raphael Segas on 4.87. Hendrik and Segas were inactive this week, but they are aware that Richard has been playing behind. It's pretty clear that the top players are still actually quite close, and any of them can make a move and claim the title.

Hendrik and Segas have swapped the title a few occasions, but this is Richard's first time in the top spot. How long will he remain up there? The Past Champions page keeps track of total number of days.

#1 Richard Karlsson made a 1.1pt ARR cut with those 20 PRs, which promoted him to Myth A. He even out-paced Hendrik and Raphael in the ARR chart, with an ARR score of 1.61, making him #1 in both AF and ARR. Who will be the first to reach Myth+ (score of 1.49)?

#4 Vincent van der Fluit managed to turn in a 0.3 AF drop for the week, despite having many of his times beaten by Richard. Vince raced 8 PRs this week, 3 of this were G+ (BP lap was G+7!) He lowered his ARR to 2.26, which is 1/4 of the way towards becoming Myth+. Since Hendrik and Raphael fell back about 0.6 each and Vince caught up to them by 0.3, the net gain over the week was a whole AF point removed from the gap. The gap between him and #3 Raphael is now 0.5 AF pts. He might even catch Raphael by next week?!

Germany is still winning, and #5 Marius Mollenhauer is therefore still drinking to celebrate. He only reported 7 PRs, but only one of them was not a 60Hz record. This brings Marius' 60Hz WR tally to 22, while Olivier Peruch has fallen back to 9. In the combined ladder, Marius improved by 1.3 AF pts, and sliced a whole AF point off the gap between him and #4 Vincent, and now trails Vincent by only 0.2. That means he might catch Vince, or even Raphael, very soon. Another exciting piece of news is that, like Richard, Marius has now become Myth A. He is one of 5 people to do so. His ARR score of 2.09 is almost 1/2 of the way to reaching Myth+. While Richard is much closer to reaching M+ (1.6 ARR), half of Marius's times are from 2005, so he may send in many new PRs on those tracks.

#6 Tristan Eyma reported 9 scores this week, three of which were God. His 1.1pt AF cut allowed him to pass both #7 Jonathan Steel and #8 Paul Maes at the same time! The good news for Tristan is that his #6 spot looks safe for now, but the bad news is that he faces a 3pt AF gap between him and the next player ahead, #5 Marius.

#9 Aron Langerak passed Rene Bauer last week, and not only passed Rene's friend #11 David Schiering, but also #10 Olivier Peruch. He did this by achieving 16 new PRs, for a huge 2.5pt AF cut (almost as big as Richard's). He's got a lot of momentum, but we expect him to slow down a little, now that the PRs become a lot harder to find. His next goals are Steel and Maes, who are 2 AF pts ahead. In the meantime, he can be quite pleased he made the top-10, and earnt the title Myth B.

#10 Olivier scored 5 PRs and is still active, though he managed only a very small AF cut for this week, with being bombarded by PRs from Richard, Aron and Marius that were beating his PRs. Maybe slow and steady will win the race? smile


Before we continue... Nathan Cromwell has been temporarily removed from the site. Apparently he's having trouble making/providing videos to the proof mod (Vince), so Vince decided to take him off the ranking to kick him into getting himself validated. Nathan was ranked just inside the top 20, so many people's AF scores improved a little. We hope he validates himself and gets his times reinstated soon. Oh, btw, if you were planning on make a TV interview, documentary or writing a biography of the best Canadian karter, you'll have to arrange an appointment with Nathan's stunt-double, #48 Benoit Boudreau.

#23 Jean-Christphe Lacastaignerate has returned after a 3-week absence/holiday/sleep with 6 new PRs. He cut a reasonable 2.2pts with that, to overtake #24 Kris Will and #25 Jake Sopcak. Top-20 is beckoning, and #21 Olivier Lavenant and #22 Mike Hartjens are only a tiny bit in front. Lavenant scored 5 PRs of his own this week (and passed Hartjens), so he may refuse to let J-C pass him without a fight.

#43 Marijn Jongbloed has somehow managed 22 new PRs (Dutch Crazy Holy Llama Duck Smash PR Virus?), which is three times more than last week. So he's sort of accelerating? His PRs this week were quite varied, ranging from Myth D, though the Titans and all the way to Hero C. This means that he's probably got a fair bit of potential if he can hit Myth times, so all the PRing is justified. Marijn's effort amounted to a 14.7 AF pt cut, and he gained around 16 places this week. If you do the maths, that means he broke the top-50 barrier, too! #39 Bart Janssen-Bouwmeester and #40 Steven Zwartjes are probably on his To-Beat list.

Another player who broke the top-50 this week was #45 Alejandro Laflamme, who also became Titan C. His PRs averaged to around mid-Titan level, but Alejandro also scored his first Myth time, a Myth C in Baby Park. Yet another was #48 Benoit Boudreau, who passed #49 Julien Boisiaud, #50 Yoann Seznec and #51 me.

#59 Ivo van der Stap made a small comeback in the past couple of days, and could continue his comeback into the new month. Ivo not only scored his first Myth time this week, but it was also Myth B, on Baby Park (course, not lap!). His next best is Titan A, but he also has many Hero times that he can try to improve. Improving them will help him chase up fellow Dutchie, #56 Thomas van Leeuwen. Thomas overtook #57 Sylvin Rigal this week, and is turtling along towards the top 50.

#82 Andrew Math is turning heads and raising question marks, about his potential and his validity. He's a young guy with time to burn, so 27 PRs is feasible, if annoying and jealousy-inducing. As big cuts go, 27 PRs is sure to cause a shake-up in the rankings, and Andrew produced a 33pt AF cut that propelled him far beyond the top-100 barrier. He's starting to score Titan times now, so everyone close in front of him should expect to be getting passed sooner or later.

#87 John Hornick was annoyed that Andrew doesn't seem to want to stick around to play and made such big cuts, but in the mean time, John can entertain himself with the prospect of catching Silver and Bronze medallists #75 Simon Laflamme and #79 Matt Brown, who are within reach of a week or two of PRs. Canada's leader, #48 Benoit, might make a good long-term goal.

#119 Dan Walker has finished his exams, and promises to play more kart. He started off with 20 PRs, resulting in a 19pt AF cut. He might reach the top-100 soon if he keeps it up.

#123 Konsta Jukka has run away with the Finland title, scoring a 39pt AF cut this week to leave #151 Oskar Joutsijoki and #158 Arto Jarvela far into the distance. Konsta is sending in several PRs every day or two, and shows no signs of slowing down. Looks like he will be a top-100 finisher in the near future. And he became Exp A this week, so expect a new Hero by next week!

Expert C player #214 Jerrol Hoppenbrouwers is slowly closing down the gap between him and son Flynn. Flynn improved ten places this week, while Jerrol did slightly better, overtaking 15 players. Among his victims were two Dutchies (#221 Enzio Fruijtier, #229 Egbert van Doeselaar), and he has several more en route to the top-200 and Flynn. One Dutchie who may only make a fleeting appearance is #224 Marc Schwartz. Marc moved up 56 places over the week, due to a big 67pt AF cut. He also became an Expert, at Exp D! It's the third week in a row that Marc had made a large cut; he joined a bit less than a month ago, and has since improved by over 100 positions.

#242 Rhodri Morgan used to follow Marc around for a little while, but now he's closer to matching the pace of #237 Robert Chastain. Both players broke into the top-250 to close of the month, both had cuts of around 25 AF pts, and both were promoted from Adv A to Exp D.

Honourable mentions: #64 Michael Duerr (Hero A), #78 Andre Overesch (Hero B), #134 Joey Michorius (Exp A), #269 Ricardo Fernandez (Adv A), #361 Jeff Kottcamp (skipped past Int A to claim Adv D instead), #414 Paul Klein (Int A), #492 Mark Engelsman (reached Int D, but stopped just shy of Int C).


New Records

Lots and lots.

Something is wrong with Peach Beach. Maybe it's a glitch with the timer, since four players are tied for first place here, the chances of which are very small. We already had three-way-tie last week, but this time it was Tristan Eyma who was the new player to score a 21"856 lap. Richard Karlsson played some PB as well, and came up 0.02 short and settled for 5th place. Unless he ties or beats the WR, he can't get better than 5th!

As mentioned, Richard made colossal improvements this week, and a few of those were records. Richard started off his WR week with two new times on Mario Circuit, 1'28"004 and 27"986. The course time is Myth A, and 0.15 faster than v/d/ Fluit's Myth B score from two months ago. The lap is "only" 0.04 faster than second place, but Richard is the first and only player under 28 seconds here, and his time meets the God standard.

Later in the week, Richard played Daisy Cruiser. He was already pretty good here, but maybe he was desperate for AF points. His 1'37"605 edges out Paul Maes by 0.01, but both players have Myth+ scores. Tristan Eyma recently took the Wario Colosseum lap record from Segas, by a narrow margin (0.02). Richard ended his week by beating Tristan by 1/10th of that margin - by 0.002! His 58"374, just like Tristan's and Rapha's laps, satisfies the God standard.

Last week, Vincent van der Fluit decided to play some Bowser's Castle, since nobody had really focused on it for a while. His new times seem to have attracted some activity, with both records tumbling this week. Karlsson raced his 5th record of the week, beating Vincent's 2'18'62 with a 2'18"572. Vince's was Myth A, but Richard's is Myth+. Aron Langerak squeezed in between Vince and Richard at the very end of the week, missing out on the WR with a 2'18"61. However, Aron succeeded in the lap - 45"155 was a whole 0.08 faster than Vince, and reaches the God standard. Richard also played the lap, but managed a 45'25 for 3rd place. So Vince lost some records, but he also beat one. His new Mushroom Bridge 25"745 lap is G+3, and 0.02 faster than Tristan Eyma.

Last but not least, Olivier Peruch has beaten both of the Dino Dino Jungle records. The scores were 1'42"754 and 33"208. The ranks are Myth A and Myth+. The 3lap time is 0.04 faster than Emmanuel Debenest's record from one year ago. The lap managed to top Segas by 0.03, but didn't reach the God standard. Karlsson also played DDJ, scoring 4th place in both 3lap and lap, while Eyma managed 3rd place on the lap this week. Maybe the activity of these 3 strong players will encourage the others to switch to DDJ.

In 60Hz, Marius Mollenhauer has been Holy Smashing some records, trying to get back some back from the ones Olivier took. The Baby Park 7lap was a narrow one, with Marius's new 1'04"923 being only 0.02 faster than Olivier. Lucky for Marius, he made it to Myth A while Olivier's time was Myth B! Bo Garman is the 3rd player in 60Hz who has broken 1'05. Now to a much bigger lead... Mario Circuit! Marius improved the 60Hz marks to 1'28"205 and 28"026 (Myth B and Myth+). The 3lap time is 3rd overall, while the lap is 2nd overall! Unlucky for Marius that Richard beat both overall WRs in 50Hz this week. But Marius leads the rest of the 60Hz field by 0.25 in the course time and 0.09 in the lap.

Jake Sopcak recently scored a 1'35'7 in Mushroom City, to claim the 60Hz record. Marius saw an opportunity to play a level he had not touched in some time, and perhaps the new MT techs helped him to beat Jake by 0.4s, with a 1'35"343. It is 5th in the overall stakes, but is faster than Karlsson, Segas, Maes, Steel and Eyma. Oh, it's also a God time smile As for the lap, Marius's new 31"134 was even G+2, and is 0.16 faster than the next best 60Hz score. It is 4th overall, but he missed Hendrik Bunde by just 0.001.

While Richard improved the overall Daisy Cruiser WR, Marius got pretty close to beating him with a 1'37"659, only 0.05 slower. Overall, it is 4th place, and is behind Bunde but ahead of Segas. The next best 60Hz time is Olivier's, pretty close behind at 1'37'83.

Of course, Olivier Peruch also beat both of the DDJ records. But since they were overall records, they are listed above. Olivier leads Marius by around 0.8s in the 3lap and 0.14 in the lap there. However, Moly's times are from last year, and he might be planning to return to this level some day!


New Players

Welcome to...

Omar Al-Azhar, Netherlands (252nd, Adv A)
Gilles Roudeilla, France (~278, Adv A)
Mark Turner, UK (~644, Beg C)
Rob Blanchard, USA (545th, Beg A)
Richard Turenhout, Netherlands (436th, Int B)