from organised European events, and to not organise international events in Russia or Belarus. Development World Triathlon has an ongoing effort to develop the sport especially outside of Europe and English speaking countries. One method is through development grants such as the recent one to the African Triathlon Union, with most of the money to national federations allowing for support of organize events, as well as funding for athlete, coach and Technical Officials courses. Another is athlete scholarships to be given to young athletes that have shown talent but who need more support than their developing National Federation can give, allowing them to perform at an international level, the end goal of these scholarships is the athletes performing for their county at the Olympic games. One global development is the introduction of certifications for coaching and technical officials meaning that important events will be contested at the high level. Ranking system World Triathlon publishes and maintains the World Rankings for the men's and women's competitions in both short and long course for triathlon and duathlon as well as aquathlon and winter triathlon races it also has a ranking for the national teams mixed relay. Each ranking has a slightly different point system but all are calculated via a rolling calendar, by taking a set number of the highest scoring results from the previous 52 weeks and adding them to a set number of the highest scoring results from the 53 to 104 weeks previous. Each races maximum score is decided by the ITU's ranking criteria and then the athlete who comes first will earn that many points with each following athlete earning 7.5% less point than the athlete before them. Championships In its founding year World Triathlon only ran the World triathlon championship, the following year it also began hosting the duathlon world championship. In 1991 the ITU started hosting a series of triathlon races as the triathlon World Cup. The distances chosen for the World championship and World Cup races were 1,500m swimming, 40 km of bike and 10 km of running, these parameters were chosen from existing distances in swimming, cycling and running disciplines in the Olympic Games. This triathlon distance has become known as the standard distance in the world of triathlon. In 1994 to have a long-distance championship similar to Ironman Triathlon events but hosted by the sports governing body the Long Distance Triathlon World Championships