December 2017

Year starts with 8th Vienna Classics

Posted on December 29, 2017 | by fir | Leave a Comment

Traditionally the FIR Racketlon World Tour starts with the Vienna Classics into the New Year. From Friday 5th to Sunday 7th January the International World Tour event will be held in the European Championship venue City & Country Club Wienerberg. With 178 entries of 121 different players from 14 countries in 19 draws the expectations were more than met. Defending champions Christine Seehofer and Lukas Windischberger are the favourites for the elite titles once more. Friday is doubles day, all singles start on Saturday on four courts parallel including a centre court in all sports with approved referees. All draws and the time schedule are now online on fir.tournamentsoftware.com

Afghan refugees will participate

For the first time 10 refugees from Afghanistan including two girls from the RFA integration project will actively take part in the tournament. The youngsters will help with the tournament organisation like at the European Championships and participate in the u21 juniors and Men C – Amateur draws for the first time. Sport is lived integration and Racketlon wants to show this.

Late entries

Currently all draws are full, but late entries for the waiting list are possible per e-mail to tournament director Fabian Hofmann hofmann@racketlon.at

RFA-President
Marcel Weigl

Start the New Racketlon Year in Vienna

Posted on December 25, 2017 | by fir | Leave a Comment

The annual kick-off of the FIR World Tour will traditionally take place in Austria with the Vienna New Year Classics from Friday 5th to Sunday 7th January 2018. The International World Tour Event will be held in the European Championship Venue City & Country Club and will offer four courts in each sport as well as Arion City Hotel as official tournament hotel in walking distance. Registration deadline is Christmas day, Monday 25th December. It is possible to enter with the FIR license 2017 on fir.tournamentsoftware.com

Defending Champions all Austrian
In 2017 all victories in the elite classes went to Austria. The top players in the current FIR world rankings Lukas Windischberger and Christine Seehofer won the elite singles as well as mixed doubles together. In women doubles Christine Seehofer paired with her sister Elisabeth to take gold, while Lukas Windischberger won the title with Michi Dickert.

Tournament Website http://racketlon.at/vc2018/

Contact Tournament Director Fabian Hofmann hofmann@racketlon.at

Tournament Director
Fabian Hofmann

Tournament Draw Process

Posted on December 20, 2017 | by fir | Leave a Comment

FIR always strives for consistent tournament quality across all FIR Racketlon events. This serves not only to set expectations of what kind of matches players can expect when entering tournaments, but also that appropriate ranking points are awarded.

One important aspect is that an Elite class is filled primarily with Elite players and does not contain a large number of truly „B“ players e.g. as a result of the tournament’s location or timing. This can be achieved for singles events by selecting a draw-size which results in a draw „cut-off“ having a relatively consistent World Ranking. For Mens A event, the cutoff World Ranking in the range 60-80, for Womens A events, generally with far fewer entries, a cutoff of around 20-25 is typical, as shown by the the cut-off graphs for all 2017 FIR tournaments.

Although the uppermost goal is to achieve the best possible player experience for all tournaments, this is often not possible without concessions or compromise, resulting in some players being disadvantaged. Sometimes the rules cannot easily be applied to exception cases and a subjective judgement call is necessary.

Our goal is nevertheless that the tournament draw process follows a rule-based, objective system as far as is possible. The main driving force is to set deadlines to ensure that the tournament draws and schedules can be made on time and in accordance with the rules. Especially with the new rule introduced in 2017 that Elite draws should be broadcast live, this demands a more rigid timeline with some advance planning, so that players are able to know when to tune in to Facebook. When the rules are not easy to apply, we strive for clarity on how to deal with it.

An equally important aspect is to ensure that decisions are taken on a neutral, unbiased basis, and consistently across all tournaments. This must be accompanied by the need for fairness towards the players, to avoid e.g. that some players are consistently forced into classes they are unhappy with, or that late entries are allowed by some tournaments but rejected by others.

Making a tournament draw can often be a very challenging process. In an attempt to facilitate it, the FIR Council has discussed and approved a Tournament Draw Process, which is now available on http://www.racketlon.net/content/tournament-support .

Your feedback is welcome – we will be happy to improve it further, where this is possible.

World Tour 2018

Posted on December 5, 2017 | by fir | Leave a Comment

Next season’s World Tour calendar has been finalized. A lot of work have been put in to get the last few tournaments on the list, but we are happy to now announce a total of 14 World Tour tournaments plus another 2 challengers. There can easily be more challengers coming in 2018 as the deadline for applying for one of these is just 4 months prior to the tournament.

The Tour will as usual start in Vienna in the first weekend of the year. The City and Country Club in Vienna, which hosted the European Championships this year, will host the Vienna Classics. In February Swedish Open returns to Malmö including the first leg of the 2018 Champions League. This is followed only one week later by the Club La Santa Open in Lanzarote, Spain, hosted by Racketlon Denmark. April includes the traditional Czech Open and the first challenger (confirmed) challenger of the year, the Massachusetts Racket Masters in USA.

Two tournaments in Nussloch, Germany

In May the World Doubles Championships will be hosted at the popular venue of Racket Center in Nussloch. This will be hosted along with IWT Nussloch Open and will be a 4-day tournament. Thursday and Friday will be the World Doubles Championship and Saturday and Sunday will the IWT, which will only be a singles tournament. Nussloch will also host the traditional German Open like the many past years. Like last year the second leg of the Champions League will be hosted on the Friday of this weekend. Note that FIR and Racket Center Nussloch have decided to move it into start August instead of on the normal date at the end of July.

In between the two tournaments in Nussloch there are three stops on the tour, which will take us to Belgium, France and Latvia. Oudenaarde in Belgium is as always the host of the most popular tournament on the tour, the King of Rackets. In Paris the second (confirmed) challenger of the year, which will take place and Latvia returns for the third straight year with an IWT in Riga.

World Champs in Switzerland

The Team and Singles World Championships will take place in Vitis in Zürich, Switzerland. This venue last hosted the World Champs back in 2013 and is to date still the biggest racketlon tournament ever hosted. The Finnish Open in Helsinki will follow before the tour again goes to Malta for some sun in October. The tour will end in Austria with the World Tour Finals in Wiener Neudorf close to Vienna. Beneath a full overview of the 2018 FIR World Tour. See also fir.tournamentsoftware.com, where all the tournaments have been published.

Date	Type	Tournament Name	Country	Tournament Director	Delegate
5-7.1	IWT	Vienna Classics	Austria	Fabian Hofmann	Radu Ionescu
23-25.2	IWT + CL	Swedish Open	Sweden	Markus Borg	Kresten Hougaard
3-5.3	IWT	Club La Santa Open	Lanzarote, Spain	Kresten Hougaard	Luke Barnes
20-22.4	IWT	Czech Open	Czech Republic	Svatopluk Rejthar	Kirsten Kaptein
28-29.4	CHA	Massachusetts Racket Masters	USA	Andy Stenson	TBC
10-11.5	WC dbl	WC Doubles	Germany	Matthias Zimmermann	Hans Van Daele
12-13.5	IWT	Nussloch Open	Germany	Matthias Zimmermann	Hans Van Daele
1-3.6	SWT	King of Rackets	Belgium	Hilde van Onderbergen	Morten Jaksland
29.6-1.7	CHA	French Open	France	Josselin Gadé	Johnny Bispham
13-15.7	IWT	Latvian Open	Latvia	Zigmars Puikevics	Johnny Bispham
3-5.8	IWT + CL	German Open	Germany	Matthias Zimmermann	Kresten Hougaard
22-26.8	WC	WC Singles	Switzerland	Esther Dübendorfer	J. Bishop / R. Middleton
22-26.8	WC	WC Teams	Switzerland	Esther Dübendorfer	J. Bishop / R. Middleton
14-16.9	IWT	Finnish Open	Finland	Poku Salo	TBD
12-14.10	IWT	Malta Open	Malta	Duncan Stahl	Kirsten Kaptein
23-25.11	SWT	World Tour Finals Austrian Open	Austria	Fabian Hofmann	Richard Middleton

Kresten Hougaard
FIR President

For The First Time: Thailand Open 2017

Posted on December 5, 2017 | by fir | Leave a Comment

The last tournament of the year will be held at the end of this month. The Thailand Open will take place on 28th and 29th December. Originally it was planned as a 3 day tournament, but the number of registered players is making it possible to finish it in 2 days only.
Although Tournament Director Frank Kleiber is very disappointed about the low number of participants as he advertised this tournament since November 2016, he will give his very best to make this tournament unforgettable for the players that come to play. You can still register on fir.tournamentsoftware.com! Entry deadline is on 15th December.

The tournament will be held at the 10th biggest hotel worldwide, the Ambassador City Jomtien near Pattaya. Here you can find 4 table tennis tables, 6 badminton, 8 squash and 2 outdoor tennis courts. Players enjoy very special low rates at the hotel although it is prime travelling time here.

The players party will be held after the tournament, so that no one has to play the other day and can enjoy the evening. We will be serving traditional Thai food at the players party, and later the night everybody can prove their singing skills at the Karaoke machine.

Furthermore we have planned a new year´s eve party, where we get together for Thai food in a cozy restaurant, and finally we will enjoy the fireworks on the famous Walking Street of Pattaya.
Frank Kleiber
Tournament Director

EUR 10 surcharge for tournament registration in last month

Posted on December 2, 2017 | by fir | Leave a Comment

Don’t forget about the new rule allowing the Tournament Director to charge players an additional EUR 10 if their first registration was within the last 4 weeks before close of registration. As we already reported on 17th October, the objective of this new rule is to improve the visibility of players participating in the tournament, not as an additional source of revenue for Tournament Directors (though this may well be a by-product).

Given the timing of this new rule, Vienna Classics has generously allowed this deadline to be extended from Monday 27. November to Monday 11th December. If you were thinking of playing Vienna Classics next month, right now would be an excellent time to go online and register, to make sure you don’t have an unpleasant surprise at the tournament desk on arrival.

As for the following tournaments, please don’t expect this extension to be granted again, as the new Regulations should be published in January for all to see. Why wait? Just register!