ENDED Free Rider World Cup 5 - Prizes Out!

Here we go. Last big post for the contest. It was time for the Championship Finals. First of all, thanks to all of you guys for joining or being involved with the contest somehow. That's the only way a contest can be sucessful. It wouldn't matter if I hosted he contest but nobody signed up, so the contest only happened because of you guys, so thanks again. That's the main reason I like to do it. In the first time I hosted this contest, back in 2019, my main motivation was because I would like to see a cool contest in the game again, because the old ones were fun, but there weren't any sucessful big ones since 2016 (RIP NFRL). So I did it. Same for last year. The 3rd edition was a success, we got a good amount of players and some really good coin prizes (over 100k pot). The 4th edition was crazy, since we got almost as much coins (94k+), but we also got 40$ for the pot for the top 3 (kind donations from Cork and Eryp back then). Also we had the biggest amount of people signing up so far in the 4th edition (53 if I'm not mistaken), that I believe it was tied by the Ghosting Battle Contest 2. In terms of active ghosters, we had 48 last year, that was the record. For this year, we broke most of the records for Ghosting Contests. Here some quick comparisons with some of the biggest individual contests we had:



In terms of replies it was far bigger than any ghosting contest, showing a great engagement for the community. In terms of views on the forums, only the 1st edition of the World Cup had a bit more views, with is very interesting, since there were way more people playing back then. I barely ghosted the GBC1, but I was active in all of the other contests in this image and I can say that all of them were very fun.

It's really insane how we could get as many players and as much engagement without having a cool prize. When we started the contest, we had no prizes at all, and then later we got the donation from Apocolypse that we will talk more about later.

We broke the record for the amount of people signing up for a ghosting contest, since we have the incredible amount of 70 players signing up. If we are going to be very technical, we didn't beat the record of active ghosters, since there were exactly 48 people ghosting the Qualifiers, which is a tie with the last edition, but that wasn't really what happened. We had many more ghosters that tried but weren't able to finish the track, so I'm pretty sure we had at least 55-60 people trying to ghost in this contest. Also, some people tried to join late as well, so yeah, we had a good amount of people interested. Thanks for that, guys. It's very cool to see that community is still somewhat alive.

Let's talk about some specific topics now.

Rounds/Tracks:

Qualifiers:

The first round was a cool round on a track made by Apocolypse, with some very small help from me. It was a really cool track in my opinion. People complained in an alarming rate about the tube at the end, that was my idea, but I feel like most people liked the track, lol. The track made it to the Hot and Trending pages and was well-received overall. It had an interesting ride for the most part and a reallly awesome detail. The round had some really cool ghosts, including a tied 2nd place on the round from our champion mudkip and the 3rd place BoostButt, with a cool 31.23 time. RedOrBlue had the best time on the round with a 31.13 ghos.

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/779007-frwc5-qualifiers - 8.1k plays - 114 votes - 88% approval

Seeding:

Then there was the seeding process that ended up being made based on the placements in the Qualifiers. The members of the team not involved in ghosting the contest (Eryp and BrandonBishop50) handled the seeding process again. They made the Pot 1 be the 8 best placed players in the Qualifiers, the Pot 2 the 9th-16th places, the Pot 3 the 17th-24th places and the Pot 4 the 25th-32nd places. Everyone else was eliminated from the contest and the 32 best placed players were ramdomly selected for the 8 groups, respecting the rule of only 1 member from each pot.

Group Stage:

In the group stage we had some really interesting groups, with the best ones at first sight being the 2 and 6. 3 and 7 seemed interesting at first as well. We also had 2 people dropping out (marked with the and the replacements are on the right). Here were the Groups:

Group 1: Cerulean/Sharkfin, RadiumRC, Wolf777, White_Panther Coated_Badger
Group 2: Madara, spruce, Totoca12, weem/Wheeliemaker
Group 3: RedOrBlue, Uniior, Apocolypse, Kazman
Group 4: Chaos-Fallen, adversitas, Symantec, HafiSyah
Group 5: DrChill, Giampitek, CHARREDLIZARD21/DeezNutsForPrez, awesomeman82
Group 6: BoostButt, Zycerak, Stevie.T, Xenom
Group 7: Backtwice, Pie42, we_are_number_one YourAverageIndian, Cynic
Group 8: mudkip, NotVeryGood, Kanvo, Unadvertised

Match 1:

In the first match of the Group Stage, we had a really cool offroad track made by spruce with some additional detail by Eryp, that ended up publishing the track. The track was really well-received and got top position in the Hot and Trending pages. It had a great ride, cool and simple detail (especially after Eryp's additions). Top 3 matches (best averages) were Zycerak 50.77 vs 49.50 Stevie.T, spruce 50.20 vs 53.53 Totoca12 and Uniior 52.47 vs 54.13 Apocolypse. 1st place on the round was also RedOrBlue with a 49.13 time, Stevie.T was 2nd with a 49.50 time and BoostButt was 3rd, with a 49.70 time.

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/780688-frwc5-group-stage-1 - 3.3k plays - 56 votes - 91% approval

Match 2:

In the second match of the Group Stage, we had an interesting round. Although a good amount of people liked isekeb's track, there were a lot of people that called it a bit "enraging". The ride was a bit too hard, but it was still cool. The detail was amazing. It still did good and made it to the Hot and Trending pages. Top 3 matches were BoostButt 52.70 vs 49.67 Zycerak, Madara 1:04.10 vs 48.17 spruce and Backtwice 52.23 vs 1:02.70 Pie42. 1st place on the round was spruce, with a legendary 48.17 time that earned him a feature. Zycerak was the 2nd with a 49.67 time and RedOrBlue was the 3rd, with 51.03 time.

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/781335-frwc5-gsr2 - 7.3k plays - 74 votes - 84% approval

Match 3:

In the third match of the Group Stage, we had some drama. Only a few ghosters were already guaranteed in the next round, so it was time for some battles. The track were it took place ended up being my own. While most people liked the track, with some people saying it was a fun one, the main issue with the track were the multiple shortcuts on the track. Yeah, it made things get interesting with the routing, but there was an entire bomb section that wasn't used, so that's my bad. I didn't have as much time to make and test the track, but I'm still proud of how it turned out. I feel like the ride was good, the detail not so much, but it was decent overall. It wasn't quite the success that the previous tracks were, but it made the bottom of the first page of the Trending at least and got in the Hot page as well. Top 3 matches were the insane one between BoostButt 27.17 vs 28.00 Stevie.T, that didn't get the qualification for BoostButt, despite the crazy effort, the Chaos-Fallen 27.97 vs 30.27 Symantec battle for 1st place, and the dramatic Madara 28.67 vs 29.60 Totoca12 match, where I almost beat Madara multiple times, but ended up taking the L. Really crazy round! 1st place on the round was BoostButt with his amazing 27.17 ghost (he ended up on a triple tie with Zycerak and Stevie.T and lost the qualification for the Round of 16 due to the Combined Time from the Group Stage), 2nd place was Zycerak, with a great 27.37 and the 3rd place on the round was RedOrBlue again, with a 27.63 time.

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/782546-frwc5-group-stage-match-3 - 2.5k plays - 43 votes - 88% approval

Really cool Group Stage. Big shoutout to Group 6 for having the best match in each round for the Group Stage and also for Group 2 for having a match in the top 3 matches in each round for the Group Stage.

This stage made many people wonder who would be the champion. RedOrBlue seems to be the favorite, but spruce was coming strong and so was Zycerak, Stevie.T and Chaos-Fallen. Backtwice was doing good as well, and others like DrChill, Giampitek and mudkip were doing great, but I'm pretty sure that they weren't taken as the favorites at the time. BoostButt for a top 5 ghoster in pretty much every single track, but his group was brutal and he ended up being eliminated to 0.6 second in the combined time (although having the 4th best combined time). RedOrBlue was the 1st in the Combined Time ranking, followed closely by Zycerak and Stevie.T. Here is how the groups finished:

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

How the groups ended up: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19yvmJ1lGrv89Qg9XUm69xWaxj-siZzAOXcJGe4sqhDU/edit#gid=7295258
How the combined times ended up: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...m69xWaxj-siZzAOXcJGe4sqhDU/edit#gid=728592824

CT - Combined time
* - Didn't ghost a track
** - Didn't ghost 2 tracks
*** - Didn't ghost any of the tracks

Group 1:

Cerulean/Sharkfin |9 points|152.73 CT (11th)|
Coated_Badger |6 points|310.03 CT (22nd)|
RadiumRC |3 points|188.73 CT (16th)|
Wolf777 |-2 points|62.50** CT (30th)|

Group 2:

spruce/dumptruck |9 points|152.20 CT (9th)|
Madara |6 points|142.90 CT (7th)|
Totoca12 |3 points|181.60 CT (14th)|
weem/Wheelimaker|-1 point|242.50* CT (26th)|

Group 3:

RedOrBlue |9 points|127.79 CT (1st)|
Uniior |6 points|183.3 CT (15th)|
Apocolypse |3 points|209.09 CT (20th)|
Kazman |-1 point|164.2* CT (24th)|

Group 4:

Chaos-Fallen |9 points|141.90 CT (6th)|
Symantec |6 points|173.71 CT (12th)|
adversitas |-1 point|162.30* CT (23rd)|
HafiSyah |-2 pointS|187.67** CT (31st)|

Group 5:

DrChill |9 points|147.53 CT (8th)|
Giampitek |6 points|174.33 CT (13th)|
CHARREDLIZARD21/DeezNutsForPrez|3 points|242.23 CT (21st)|
awesomeman82 |-1 point|430.97* CT (28th)|

Group 6:

Zycerak |6 points|127.81 CT (2nd)|
Stevie.T |6 points|128.97 CT (3rd)|
BoostButt |6 points|129.57 CT (4th)|
scoutrules |-1 point|378.3* CT (27th)|

Group 7:

Backtwice |9 points|136.53 CT (5th)|
Pie42 |6 points|152.20 CT (9th)|
Cynic |3 points|201.96 CT (19th)|
YourAverageIndian |-1 point|776.34* CT (29th)|

Group 8:

mudkip |9 points|189.27 CT (17th)|
NotVeryGood |6 points|197.13 CT (18th)|
Kanvo |2 points|173.30* CT (25th)|
Unadvertised |-3 points|---*** CT (32nd)|

But passed all of that, it was time for the Eliminatory Stage.

Round of 16:

In the Round of 16, we had a cool round. Not just that, but we had the most popular track of the contest. It was a collaboration between SCrane & Apocolypse. SCrane did a recent comeback and was doing many great tracks lately, so when we had some of the original trackmakers dropping out we had to call him for the help and it was a great choice. With a great offroad ride by SCrane and some great detail by Apocolypse this track got in the Hot page, Trending Page and Daily Track. Really nice! This round marked the begin of the Eliminatory Rounds for both the Winners and Losers Championship, so it was an interesting ones. Top 3 matches were Cerulean 48.90 vs 51.10 Madara, a great encounter between 2 different legendary ghoster medal winner players where Cerulean did an impressive job, DrChill 50.30 vs 50.37 Stevie.T, the best match of the round, a top-notch fight with a last day upset (after a 21-0 for Stevie.T in the poll) and a 0.07 second difference, and Chaos-Fallen 50.10 vs 54.73 Uniior, a great match as well. If we are not taking only averages in consideration, Zycerak 53.47 vs 53.33 Giampitek was also insane with an upset in the last 10 minutes. The 2 best ghosters from the best group on the Group Stage ended up falling right in the Round of 16. What a surprise! The 1st place on the round was Cerulean with a 48.90, 2nd place was RedOrBlue with a 49.67 time and 3rd place was Backtwice with a 49.87 time.

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/783593-frwc5-round-of-16 - 9.9k plays - 118 votes - 94% approval

Quarterfinals:

The Quarterfinals was an eventful round for sure. We had a track that was very talked about, some last minute results, some polemic situations ans stuff. But it was an entertaining round. The track was made by Elibloodthirst and received some mixed reviews. To be hontest, it was a complicated situation since Eli had to replace another trackmaker that left the contest on a relatively short notice. Also, he's not tha much of a ghoster so we all worked with what we could. I personally think that he had some nice obstacles here and there, but the track didn't flow quite well. The detail was ok, but since there were a couple of problems on the ride and also a few shortcuts, it wasn't the most well-received one for sure. I feel like it hit the Hot page, but not the Trending one. The top 3 matches were spruce 37.77 vs 33.30 Chaos-Fallen, where Chaos-Fallen got a major comeback after being behind spruce for the first couple of days, Cerulean 36.73 vs 37.07 RedOrBlue, where Cerulean used the "polemic" tactic to not ghost at all on the round until the last 10 minutes and then beat the people's favorite to win (it created a cool meme, though), and DrChill 39.27 vs 37.80 Backtwice, where Backtwice did the same tactic as Cerulean (and as he used to do as well) and took a last minute win, although according to him the last minute win here wasn't intentional, lol. Mudkip also had a cool win over Giampitek, that was a good surprise on this contest. 1st place on the round was Chaos-Fallen that had an awesome 33.30 time, that was recently featured. Great job! 2nd place on the round was Cerulean, with a 36.73 time, and the 3rd place on the round was RedOrBlue with a 37.07 time. RedOrBlue got eliminated from the Winners Championship while being top 3 in every track until this round. Really insane!

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/784525-happy-frwc5-quarterfinals - 2.6k plays - 60 votes - 73% approval

Semifinals:

In the Semifinals we had an interesting round. The track was an interesting one made by Exylies, with some help from Eryp and I, since we thought the track was kinda short. We ended up coming with a kinda cool track that I feel like most people liked. It was an interesting challenge with the BMX and we had some interesting matches here. The top 3 matches were the 2 semifinals, with Cerulean 29.03 vs 28.73 Backtwice, where Backtwice pulled off an epic last minute win again, and Chaos-Fallen 29.57 vs 29.50 mudkip, a legendary match where both ghosts finished with a difference of 0.07 second from each other's ghosts. Really crazy! The 3rd best match was from the Losers Championship, where we had a cool one between RadiumRC and RedOrBlue. It ended RadiumRC 32.07 vs 28.87 RedOrBlue. Shoutout for another LC match, that was a really close one and decided on the last minutes: Uniior 32.50 vs 32.40 Giampitek. 1st place on the match was Backtwice with a great 28.73 time, followed by RedOrBlue that was 2nd with a 28.87 time. Cerulean got 3rd place with a 29.03 time.

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/785957-frwc5-lc-semifinals - 828 plays - 37 votes - 76% approval

Then it was time for a quick break on the Winners Championship. Backtwice and mudkip would rest a bit for the final and Cerulean and Chaos-Fallen would rest for the 3rd place match, where they would face the Losers Champion.

Losers Championship Semifinals:

In this round, we have another interesting one. Another round where people didn't like the ride of the track very much, another round where we didn't have the time to finish the track 100% as we wanted. As I said multiple times, this contest was made without that much planning. I used my vacation to plan and start this a bit, but we didn't have the time to have everything figured out earlier. We had 3 trackmakers that dropped out, some last minute changes, personal stuff and much more, so I don't regret anything, we did the best we could. The detail of this track by Rayb25/Holystone was amazing, and as I'm writing this, this is the current Daily Track, lol. The track made it to the Hot and Trending pages as well. It looks great, but I'll admit that the ride doesn't flow 100% well all the time, there's some small bugs on some parts with the brush line and with the teleports. Also, the ending is luck based, so I get the complaints. It was still a good effort from Rayb25, that really tried to finish the track in time. I helped him a bit in the end, and we literally saved the track from being an impossible one in the last minutes, lol. As for the matches, we only had 2, so I'll talk briefly about them. This round is cool because it's made of two 1v1v1 matches, so it creates a different dynamic compared to most of the rounds on the contest. In the best match we had, we had RedOrBlue vs DrChill vs Stevie.T. It was a very tough one where Stevie.T had the lead, then DrChill and then RedOrBlue. All 3 ghosters did amazing in the contest, so congrats, guys! RedOrBlue did a 39.77 time, DrChill did a 41.87 time and Stevie.T did a 41.90 time. In the other match, it was time for spruce vs Giampitek vs BoostButt, and BoostButt had a relatively easy win. He did a 41.13 time, Giampitek did a 45.17 time and spruce did a 58.73 time. 1st place on the round was RedOrBlue, 2nd place was BoostButt and 3rd place was DrChill.

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/786553-frwc5-lc-semifinals - 3.1k plays - 67 votes - 91% approval

Losers Championship Finals:

In the Losers Championship Finals, we had a cool match and a cool track. This track made by OdysseusSupreme with some help from Madara was one of my personal favorites and was the one for the Losers Championship final match between RedOrBlue and BoostButt. The track had a trial vibe and was a bit long, but it was a great and fun track. The ride was kinda hard, but great, and the detail wasn't finished, but it was good as well. I'm not sure if the track made the Trending page, but since it's still in the 2nd page of the Trending, it probably did. I'm pretty sure it was in the Hot page at least. As for the players in the match, both players were doing great in the contest, and although RedOrBlue was the favorite to win the match in the poll, it became clear that BoostButt was the one really putting a great effort on winning this. Don't get me wrong, RedOrBlue did great, but he said it himself that he only ghosted for like half an hour, while BoostButt said he ghosted it for like 10 hours. His effort was compensated here. With a solid ghost in the last day, BoostButt finished with a great 1:40.83 time, that was enough to beat RedOrBlue's 1:42.23. After going through the whole Losers Championship, the only player to go through all of the rounds of the contest, BoostButt, had a deserving win here.

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/787298-frwc5-lc-finals - 1.2k plays - 38 votes - 89% approval​

 

Championship Finals:

Now for the last round. It was time. The time to see if the Finnish Dynasty would continue with Backtwice taking his 2nd title and the 5th title from players from Finland in the contest or if mudkip would take this win for the US and the rest of the world, lol. It was also time to see who would get 3rd place and take the medal home. It would be Cerulean, that did a great contest, beat legendary ghosters like Madara and RedOrBlue but was surprised by Backtwice in the Semifinals? Or would it be the great ghoster Chaos-Fallen that had beaten players like spruce, Uniior, adversitas and Symantec and almost beat mudkip in the end the Semifinals? Or even BoostButt that had to face Stevie.T and Zycerak in his group, and although he didn't qualify in that group, he outlasted everyone there in the contest, beating players like spruce, Zycerak, Giampitek, Pie42 and RedOrBlue in the Losers Championship? It was hard to say.

Here is what people voted in the polls: For the 1st place match the votes were 17-13 favoring Backtwice, and for the 3rd place match it was 10 votes for BoostButt, 9 for Chaos-Fallen and 6 for Cerulean. It was kinda close for sure.

First, let's talk about the track. It was a collab in the works for a while, made by SilentFinger, Apocolypse (again,lol), Logeton and Fluffysmack. The detail was amazing (I wouldn't be surprised if it gets featured) and the ride was very interesting. Challenging, hard to improve, but nothing impossible, just like a Championship Finals should be. I loved the track, and if I host another one of those contests, I would like to count on you guys to help with the tracks in the future.

Track: https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/788118-born-to-explore - 2.8k plays - 91 votes - 95% approval

Now let's talk about the round:

3rd Place Match:

In the 3rd place match, Chaos-Fallen started strong. He had a time around 2:06 and was taking the lead against BoostButt's 2:14. With time passing Chaos-Fallen eventually got a time around 1:55 and BoostButt shortened the difference between then getting a 1:57 time. After a lot of improvements, BoostButt finished with an incredible ghost of 1:49.57, only 0.37 second behind the winner of the contest. Insane job by BoostButt, his first relevant mistake was only at the 1:10 minute mark! Totally deserving 3rd place. With a time of 1:55.20, Chaos-Fallen finished a great performance in the contest, getting the 4th place. Nicely done by both of you. As for Cerulean, there were some expectations that he would ghost in the end, but he just didn't, so he's taking the 5th place. Great contest as well, expecially for the first (or almost that) contest you joined.

1st Place Match:

In the 1st place match, the ending was a bit anticlimatic. That is the first time in the 3 years we had an Eliminatory Stage that a finalist didn't ghost the final. So that was a bit underwhelming, but it was still very cool. It was cool because we knew what we would see in some level. We would see mudkip trying to improve his ghost each day and Backtwice coming out of nowhere and trying to get the crown in the last minute, as he was doing in this contest. The thing is: this time he couldn't do it in time. I warned you guys for the last 2 rounds saying that the tracks were kinda long, so you guys shouldn't leave it all for the end. I saw Backtwice online on the forums and Discord for the last hour so I was pretty sure he would be at least trying to ghost the track, and he was. He said he was really close to beat mudkip at least 3 times, but died at the end. Props to mudkip, that got his final ghost in the second day. His ghost was crazy, first relevant mistake at the 1:22 minute mark. Crazy! Later on the ghost he had some more mistakes, but for a track this long and the short time to optimize the ghost under pressure, he did amazing, crazy job! With a 1:49.20 ghost, mudkip took the crown this time and ended the Finnish Dynasty. They came close again, but at least this year, it was not the time for Noob, Anonyymi or Backtwice, it was mudkip's time. CONGRATS! The crown that was with Anonyymi for 2 years is now in the US, since the new king mudkip has risen!!

Quick recap for the top 5 players:

5th Place - Cerulean/Sharkfin - Started getting 5th place in the Qualifiers and then got in the Group 1. Beat Coated_Badger, RadiumRC and Wolf777, getting 9 points and the 11th best Combined Time in the Group Sage. He got 8th, 9th and then 14th place in the Group Stage matches. In the Round of 16, he did amazing with the 1st place in the round and sent Madara home without the chance of fighting for the title. In the Quarterfinals he shined again and beat the great RedOrBlue when everyone thought it wasn't going to happen, with the 2nd place in the round with a last minute win. In the Semifinals, despite the great 3rd place in the track, he was surprised by Backtwice and lost the match. In the 3rd place match, he didn't ghost and ended up in 5th place. Cerulean, I hope you liked the contest and can join the next ones. You might still have some stuff to prove for some people here, so the way to do it is keeping being consistent, in the cleanest way possible. Good luck with that and great performance in the contest!

4th Place - Chaos-Fallen - He started with a great 7th place in the Qualifiers and then ended up in the Group 4. He beat HafiSyah, adversitas and Symantec, getting 9 points and finishing the Group Stage with the 6th best Combined Time. He got 4th, 10th and then 4th in the matches from the Group Stage. In the Round of 16, he faced Uniior and beat him with the 4th best time in the round. In the Quarterfinals, he did a brilliant ghost and got 1st place in the round and a feature, with was enough to defeat spruce. He faced mudkip in the Semifinals and lost, despite having the 5th best time in the round. In the 3rd place match, he finished with the 3rd place in the round, but he got 4th place overall, since he wasn't on the Championship Finals and got behind BoostButt. Great performance by Chaos-Fallen that is a very consistent ghoster. I hope you liked it, you almost made the top 3 this time. I hope to see you again in future contests.

3rd Place - BoostButt - He started already on fire with the 2nd place in the Qualifiers tied with the champion of the contest. He ended up in the insane Group 6. He started off strong getting 3rd place in the round, in the first match against scoutrules. In the second match, against Zycerak, he lost, despite getting the 6th place in the round. In the third match, despite winning the match against Stevie.T with the 1st place in the round, he lost the spot in the next round to Zycerak and Stevie.T (after a triple tie with 6 points) due to 0.6 second in the combined time. He got the 4th best Combined Time for the Group Stage, but it still wasn't enough. In the Losers Championship he had a great performance. He beat awesomeman82 in the first round, getting 9th place in the round. In the 2nd round, he beat Zycerak with the 4th place in the round on an expected rematch, although Zycerak didn't ghost the track. In the Losers Championship Quartefinals, he beat Pie42, getting 6th place in the round. In the LC Semifinals, he beat Giampitek and spruce and got the 2nd best time in the round. In the final round of the Losers Championship, he beat RedOrBlue in the Finals, getting the 1st place in the round. In the 3rd place match, he finished 2nd place in the round, just 0.37 second behind the champion mudkip. Crazy stuff! Great ghost in the round, amazing performance overall! Just like last year, the champion of the Losers Championship won the 3rd Place match and got a medal. Congrats BoostButt for that! It was a really deserving one. I hope this is just one of the first of many contests you join, and I hope you liked it. We for sure liked to have you in the contest!

2nd Place - Backtwice - He started off strong, getting 6th place in the Qualifiers and then ended up in Group 7. There he had victories over Cynic, Pie42 and YourAverageIndian in the Group Stage, getting 9 points. He got 10th, 5th and 9th place on those Group Stage matches, which made him end up with the 5th best Combined Time. In the Round of 16, he had an easy win against NotVeryGood, finishing the round in 3rd place, showing that he was ready to battle for the crown. In the Quarterfinals, he forgot to ghost and got an incredible last minute win against DrChill, finishing in 6th place. In the Semifinals, he had an amazing last minute win against Cerulean and took the 1st place in the round. In the Championship Finals, people expected him to win and continue the Finnish Dynasty, and he tried, but it was late, and he failed. Despite his win back in 2016 in the 2nd edition, it was surprising to see he active again in a contest, after not being that active in the game lately, so it was cool enough to see that he can still face the current great ghosters, if he puts his mind into it. Backtwice, it might not have been the outcome you expected, but it's nice to see that you are still alive and is still a beast at this game. Maybe Finland can return to the top in the future. Anonyymi didn't participate in this one, but the country was well-represented. Well-done, man. I hope this isn't the last time we see you in a contest, and despite the frustration, I hope you enjoyed ghosting this time. Last year you complained about the vehicles, this time we didn't have any, and I feel like it was an interesting choice for sure. You did great. See you around.

1st Place - mudkip - This year's champion showed us what he was about this year right in the Qualifiers. He got a great 2nd place tied with BoostButt, just 0.1 second behind the leader of the round, RedOrBlue. In the Group Stage, he was in the Group 8. Mudkip beat Unadvertised, NotVeryGood and Kanvo and got 9 points in the Group Stage. He got 13th, 16th and 13th on those matches. He finished with only 17th best Combined Time from the Group Stage. Didn't seem like he was a contender for the 1st place at all. But we were wrong, and he was clearly holding back a little. In the Round of 16, he got 8th place in the round, which was enough to beat Pie42. In the Quarterfinals, he beat Giampitek getting the 7th time in the round. In the Semifinals, he beat Chaos-Fallen by 0.07 second in a crazy match, where he finished 4th in the round. The only round he finished 1st was the only one that mattered, the only one you can't win if you don't get 1st place, the Championship Finals. An improvable winner to an unusual contest. Long live the new king, the new champion of the Free Rider World Cup, the one who dethroned Finland, the great mudkip! Congrats, man! I hope you enjoyed the contest, we for sure enjoyed having you in it. We hope to see you trying to defend your title next year.

Contest Overview:


Yeah, I had to bring back the lame podium made on Paint from the last couple of years, lol.


Check the spreadhsheets for more.

Overall Placement (see it here as well):

1st - mudkip
2nd - Backtwice
3rd - BoostButt
4th - Chaos-Fallen
5th - Cerulean
6th - RedOrBlue
7th - DrChill
8th - Stevie.T
9th - Giampitek
10th - spruce
11th - RadiumRC
12th - Uniior
13th - Pie42
14th - Apocolypse
15th - Totoca12
16th - NotVeryGood
17th - Madara
18th - Cynic
19th - CHARREDLIZARD21
20th - Kanvo
21st - Symantec
22nd - Coated_Badger
23rd - Zycerak
24th - Wolf777
25th - YourAverageIndian
26th - HafiSyah
27th - adversitas
28th - Kazman
29th - weem
30th - Xenom
31st - awesomeman82
32nd - Unadvertised
33rd - we_are_number_one
34th - White_Panther
35th - YourKidding
36th - dantexpress
37th - a_drain
38th - albatr0ss
39th - BoppityBop
40th - RamdomEntirely
41st - AidenEpic
42nd - ItsYaBoiAndy
43rd - BenAbraham65
44th - Wayward
45th - PossiblyMe
46th - xMichaelFTW
47th - G-raffe
48th - holmrrhy

Prizes:

Sadly, the only prize we got is the Xbox Gift Card worth of 50 dollars donated by Apocolypse. I don't know if mudkip has an Xbox, but I'll talk to him about it. I can't exactly now, but I'll able to buy Pro or get Pro for this eventually, I don't mind doing late prizes. We always got the prizes late anyways, so if I can get something else I'll let you guys know. For now, we'll have the gift card and the medals, that were already given to the top 3.

Special Thanks:

There's many people that helped in the contest , but I wanted to give some shoutouts:

- The team: Thanks Eryp, Madara and BrandonBishop50 for accepting the challenge to help me with this. Eryp helped with a lot of stuff, including ideas, the Seeding Process, the detail of spruce's track and the final part on Exylies's track, so thanks for that. We already work together on a lot of stuff in the forums, so it's cool that you accepted the challenge of helping in the contest for the 2nd year in a row. Madara was a great help when reaching out to the trackmakers and checking on them, giving some cool ideas and giving opinions on the tracks as well. It was nice having a perspective of a player that had hosted 2 sucessful ghosting contests on the team, you for sure helped. The no vehicles idea was a good one. BrandonBishop50 accepted the challenge of helping as well and it was cool to have him back. He didn't really talk on the thread, but he helped us again with the spreadsheets, with the Seeding Process and some general ideas for the contest. He also remembered some things that I have forgotten, like how we did the Overall Placements, and a lot of stuff. Thanks for that and thanks overall for happening for the 2nd year and a row. Let's see if we can all get together for this next year. PS: Madara, if you need help for the GBC3 let me know.

- The trackmakers: Thanks guys, for real. That's for Apocolypse (will talk more about you later), spruce, isekeb, Elibloodthirst, Exylies, Rayb25/Holystone, OdysseusSupreme, Madara, SilentFinger, Logeton and Fluffysmack. We couldn't have done without you guys. Also, thanks to Eryp again for helping a bit with the tracks from spruce and Exylies. It was important.

- Apocolypse: For real, major shoutout to this guy. We initially talked about him helping with 1 track, and it ended up being 3, lol. He made the first track (with some really small help from me), detailed SCrane's track and even used his big collab with SilentFinger, Logeton and Fluffysmack for the contest. Also, he donated the Xbox Gift Card we are using as a prize. What a legend! He also did great in the contest (finished 1 position ahead of me, nice), so thanks, man. You really helped this contest happen. I hope we can work together again in the next one.

- Every contestant: To all the 48 players who ghosted in the contest, to all of the 70 that signed up, for all the people that replied, interacted, voted in the polls, thank you! This couldn't help without you guys. We did great this year even without a big prize, so thanks to all of you for helping making this year's contest.

Personal Experience and Final Thoughts:

I personally think we did great this year. I feel like the rounds were more dynamic and we had more people participating in the contest. We had more people actually ghosting the contest, more people voting on the polls, more people replying and interacting in the contest (74 pages with over 1400 replies? What? I have never seen this for a contest), so I think it was great. We broke most of the records for the ghosting contests in a time that isn't the most popular time for the game, and definitely not the time where we have the most support from the game, but we still pulled off something cool, so that's good.

If I would say anything that it's clear that still can be improved would be some of the tracks. I feel like we did a major upgrade from last year. The no vehicles thing was great, and I think most of the tracks were cool. Spruce's track was great, so was SCrane's. The last track, the big collab with Apocolypse, SilentFinger, Fluffysmack and Logeton was great as well. The OdysseusSupreme/Madara track was really good, the first Apocolypse's track was great other than the tube I made. Isekeb's track might have been too hard for the Group Stages, but still had some good things. I feel like my track was cool other than the shortcuts thing, Exylies made a good track and Eli's and Rayb's tracks had some problems in the ride that we already talked about, but overall I feel like it was great. Not sure if we are going to do a survey like last year, but I would like to see some feedback from you guys in what worked and what didn't. Did you like the long commentary by me? Maybe the race commentary about CHARREDLIZARD21 (he didn't continue it, though. But the ones he did were great in my opinion)? Did you like the polls? The length of the rounds? The tracks? Should there be vehicles or not? Let me know what you guys think.

I had so much fun (and work, lol) racing and hosting this, but now I'll focus on my studies and in the other stuff I do here, like the Official Featured Ghosts thread, moderating stuff and the list goes on. Peace out, guys! If I have anything new to say about something like the prizes, I'll for sure do it. But please let me know what you guys think, and sorry for the long posts again.​