I am by no means an expert on FIS points, but I've noticed a few things. First of all, FIS uses a points system to rank skiers. There are minimum point requirements for starting World cup and Olympic races (I think that it is one race w/in the last year under 100 points). Each race gets a point penalty based on who the top five finishers were. At the Senior Nationals Women's Sprint Qualifier, that penalty was 109.48, so that is how many points the winner, Hovey, got. Based on each racer's time back from the winner they get points computed. I was 3.4 seconds back so I got 134 points for that race (lower points are better). The lowest penalty at Nationals this year for the women was 98.75 in the pursuit. The lowest penalty for the men was the 30 km skate with 23.53 points. The penalties for the U23 races have been about 35 points, so even qualifing in 24th for the sprint gave me better points than 3rd at U.S. Nationals.

Clearly, in order to improve our FIS points we have to go race in Europe or have the Europeans race over here. This explains why the men's penalties are so much better than the women's in the U.S. More men are supported at World Cup races in Europe than women. When was the last time that USSA sent a women to a European World Cup race (Dussault '04-'05 I think)? Babikov racing in the U.S. also lowers the men's point penalty. This is also why I support recruiting Europeans for the Collegiate race circuit.

Anyway, we're doing what we can over here, lowering our FIS ranking so that when we come back to the states to race we'll help lower the points penalties for our domestic races.