The European Triathlon Union has changed its elite ranking system for all ITU Triathlon European Cups and ETU Triathlon European Championships.
The new system means that points can no longer roll over from the previous race season, and is expected to offer a more accurate representation of which athletes are performing strongly in a given year.
In addition, the total annual prize money has now been set at €25k, with a 50/50 split between the top ten male and female elites - up from the €20k made available in each of the two previous years.
A spokesperson for the ETU told 220 Triathlon: "The immediate effect will be to hopefully motivate athletes to compete in the remaining European Cups this year but in reality, given training schedules, it will reinvigorate the ETU European Cup competitions for 2014 and encourage more athletes to take part in our events."
The old accumulative points system will however continue to exist under a new name - the 'ETU Points List' - which will be used for rankings and start positions in European Cups. In addition, the current ETU Junior Ranking system will remain in its current form.
The remaining European Cup events for this year are Penza (Russia) on 18 August, Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) on 25 August, and the Grand Final will be in Seville (Spain) on 20 October.
The new current rankings can be seen at www.triathlon.org/rankings.