The overall ranking for the 2025 Freeride World Tour was initially shown slightly incorrect on the FWT website following the tour’s final event, the Xtreme Verbier last week. In case you read our report about the event, you might have noticed our confusion about the situation, as the final overall standings were shown correctly in the event’s livestream, but then were presented differently on the website. As we assumed the website would be correct, we initially reported on the overall standing according to the results shown on the website. Nevertheless, we filed a request to the FWT organization about what was going on. According to the FWT, they became aware of the issue quickly, but it took some time to correct the listing on the website, since the error was not due to a wrong input but due to a wrong programming that would auto-update the rankings based on the event’s results. The error is now corrected, though, and the overall rankings are displayed correctly on the FWT website and we also updated our event report article.
The issue didn’t have too many consequences since the difference in points awarded was only small. A victory at a normal FWT event awards 10,000 points and all following positions earn a given percentage of that amount, while at the tour final in Verbier, the winner’s amount is 12,000 points and all other points are calculated accordingly. You can read a further analysis of the ranking system in this article at the very bottom of the page. The original error on the FWT website was that the winner’s amount was set to 12,500 points.
However, it still had one consequence in the overall ranking. In Ski Men, Valentin Rainer was originally ranked fifth just behind Ben Richards on the FWT website, while in reality—and correctly shown during the livestream—he placed fourth just ahead of Ben. The difference came from the higher value which a result at the tour final would have, if the points were bumped up to 12,500 points for the winner instead of 12,000 points as is actually the case. As the points for all following positions are calculated as a percentage of the winner’s points, the upgrade applies throughout the result list. This had the consequence that the points awarded to Ben in the original calculation for the FWT website outweighed the overall point sum of Valentin. Scaling down the difference changes the picture. What it tells us, it was damn close between Valentin and Ben, while all other overall results weren’t effected and therefore it more clear cut.