During the days in Cape Town (RSA), the members of the FIS Cross-Country Committee and its various Sub-Committees were working hard for the development of the discipline. Several new rules and adaptations of the regulations were prepared to make the sport more attractive, fair and more easily understandable. Here the most important changes:
While in the last several years the distance and sprint races were counting to the overall World Cup based on a 2:1 ratio, from next season on, every race, whether it is a distance race or a sprint race will count to the overall World Cup ranking; the team sprint and relay competitions will count, as before, only to the Nations Cup.
In the future, the athletes will start according to their FIS points and the red group according to their World Cup points. This means that the so-called national group will not be placed in the front, but that they, too, will start according to their FIS points.
A refinement to the Team Sprint was also approved: the team sprint will in the future consist of two qualification heats, a break of 45 min and after that a final heat. With this break, fairness for the athletes is guaranteed and all will have sufficient time to recover. For TV, FIS can provide an exact starting time of the final, which will help to have more live transmissions.
To make the mass start races more attractive, the FIS Council allowed a trial with intermediate sprints where the top three athletes can win World Cup points (15 -10 -5) in competitions over 30 km (women) and 50 km (men).
The Tour de Ski rules were amended as well. The time limit rules in interval start Stages were further specified, so that over distances up to 5 km the athletes may not loose more than 18 % (women) or 15 % (men) to the winning time to be allowed to continue in the Tour. In interval start competitions over 5 km, these time limits are 23% for the women and 20% for the men.
