General Cross-Country decisions

Classic technique
In order to preserve the classic technique, the Jury may ban use of specific techniques on marked sections of the course. The Jury can mark zones where double poling will be forbidden. As a consensus, it was agreed that this rule will not be applied at the World Cup, World Ski Championships and Junior World Ski Championships level.

Sanctions
For OWG, WSC and WC competitions sanctions can be given by a unanimous decision of the Race Director and the TD. In the event that the TD or Race Director comes from the same nation, the TD nominates a substitute from the jury members.

Requirement of competitors
At all FIS competitions a competitor must have reached his 16th birthday before the end of the calendar year (1st January – 31st December).

FIS long distance Popular competitions
FIS points will be distributed for all FIS long distance Popular competitions with a distance of 50km or more (or 42km for the venues situated 1500m above the sea level).

U23 quota for the U23 World Ski Championships
An equal quota of 8 athletes for each gender for the U 23 teams in the FIS U23 World Ski Championships Cross-Country has been approved– new quota 8 men and 8 ladies (4 allowed to start per event/gender).

World Cup Decisions

World Cup calendar
The FIS Cross-Country World Cup calendar 2016/17 was accepted and confirmed by the FIS Council.

World Cup start quota
The reduction of the start quota for World Cup competitions has been made. The maximum number of athletes per nation is 15 (for the FIS Tour de Ski it is 10).

• The quota includes:
  Basic start quota “nation quota”, which is calculated according to the team cup standing in the previous season

• Extra quota for World Cup and COC winners & leaders. The previous season’s FIS “Overall” World Cup winners may start in addition to the calculated nation’s quotas during the 1st World Cup period in the following season.

• The FIS “Overall” World Cup leaders at the end of each World Cup periods have the right to start in World Cup competitions during the next World Cup period.
  The Overall Winners from the previous season’s COC have the right to start in the 1st World Cup period in the following season (beginning 2016-2017 season).
  National Group quota has remained unchanged and is 10 athletes

Quotas for team events (Relay and Team Sprint)
Each nation has right to enter 2 teams.

Sprint Heat selection
Last season a new system of the heat selection was tested. Qualified athletes had a chance to choose, in which quarterfinal they want to compete. The new system has been approved as the one to be used at the World Cup, World Ski Championships and Olympic Winter Games.

Team Sprint
At the World Cup best 4 teams from each semi-final are directly qualified to the final. The rest of the teams (7 teams) will be qualified according to their times in the semi-final. At the World Ski Championships, the system stays as before (2 teams from each heat will advance and the next 6 fastest teams from the 3rd – 8th ranked teams will advance).

Interval start
The interval start system as it was used as last year was confirmed with 2 adjustments: 40 athletes men (instead of 30) in front of the seeded group and the order in which athletes chose their start bib is now 1 to 15 (and not 5 to 1 / 6 to 15).

Ongoing Projects
There are several ongoing long term projects:

Strategy 2025
The Cross-Country strategy paper was presented and NSAs have been asked to continue the discussion and present the status every half a year at FIS meetings.

Bonus seconds in stage events
The current system of awarding bonus seconds in stage events has been kept. It has been decided to look in possibilities to place bonus seconds sprints on different locations on the course.

“Second league”
A working group has been established to continue work on creation of a “second league” competition series around Continental Cups and World Cup. Conclusions and proposals of the working group will be presented at the FIS meeting in Zurich this autumn.

Competition formats
The discussion on the number and type of Cross-Country competition formats will continue.