The Xterra Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific Tours are being revamped in 2023 with a new format that leverages Xterra’s World Performance Index (WPI). This is a tool to ‘recognize the fastest age group off-road triathlete in every division across the globe.’
Now in its fourth year, the WPI – a proprietary, formula-driven points scoring system developed by Xterra Europe Technical Director Nico Lebrun and IT specialist Greg Catus – that ranks athlete performances has been readied for launch. “We’re excited to put the WPI to the test in a meaningful way in 2023,” said Lebrun. “We’ve been fine tuning the WPI formula since 2017 and are confident, through rigorous testing and reality checks, that it produces the most accurate representation of an athlete’s strength at Xterra racing.”
The system was inspired by ITRA (trail running) and FIS (Skiing) points scoring systems, but built specifically and exclusively to rank Xterra athletes at full and long-distance Xterra World Championship qualifying races. The WPI delivers a score for every finisher based on a number of factors. These include: the strength and depth of field as reflected by the top ranked Xterra athletes competing in the event; the number of participants; and the difficulty of the course that takes elevation, water & air temperature, rainfall, and trail conditions into consideration. Additional factors include the level of event (Silver, Gold, Championship) and the athletes’ finishing time compared to the gender winner.
To determine Xterra Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific Tour Champions in each age group, Xterra adds that the rules are pretty simple. First, to be eligible, athletes in the Americas and EMEA regions need to race three qualifying events during the 2023 calendar year (it’s two in two different countries for the APAC region). Next, every race an athlete finishes will earn a WPI score, and the highest score in each age group, by gender and region, at the end of the year is the Tour Champion.
“Our three regions cover massive amounts of territory, from Canada to Chile in the Americas and from Switzerland to South Africa in the EMEA region, so it’s difficult to have all the best racers go head-to-head during the regular season,” explained Doug Hall, Xterra General Manager. “The WPI system is designed to identify the best racer in each country and each region during the regular season. But to truly settle the score, we hope the regional champs from every age group in every tour come to the Xterra World Championship and go head-to-head there!”
