Six nations – Austria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Great Britain and USA – can enter one more athlete for the Long distance race in WOC 2021 (Czech Republic) than they could this year. Italy can enter one more man but one woman fewer. This is the outcome of the promotion and relegation process that follows each ‘forest’ WOC.
Nations are divided – for women and men separately – into three divisions for the purpose of deciding quotas. Division 1 nations, the best 8, can enter three athletes. The 14 Division 2 nations have a quota of two athletes, and all other nations (Division 3) can enter one. However any Long distance entrant must have at least one World Ranking score greater than 600 within the previous 3 years.
A scoring system with points based on results in this year’s Long, Middle Final and Relay races is used to create a league table within each division. Points from each race are added together to give a total score. The bottom nation in Division 1 swops with the top nation in Division 2, and the bottom two nations in Division 2 swop with the top two nations in Division 3; the new divisions determine the nation quotas for the Long distance race in 2021. The outcomes of this process are:
Promotion Division 2 to Division 1: Great Britain women, Finland men
Promotion Division 3 to Division 2: Canada and USA women, Germany and Italy men
Relegation Division 1 to Division 2: Latvia women, Estonia men
Relegation Division 2 to Division 3: Hungary and Italy women, Bulgaria and Slovakia men
And this year in the men’s tables, the second highest nation in Division 2 (Austria) has more points than the second lowest in Division 1 (Russia), so these nations swop too – Austria is promoted and Russia relegated.
Additional to the above, the 2019 Long distance World Champions and the then-reigning Regional Long distance Champions have a personal entry ticket for the WOC 2021 Long race.
More information on the scoring system can be found here.
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The points calculation for 2019 can be downloaded here.