Monday 8 August 2016

News - Results on IAPLC 2016 -Rankings & Facts

Advert for IAPLC 2016
As many of you already know, the results of the Internatonal Aquatic Plants Layout Contest (IAPLC) for 2016 have been published today. This is a long-waited moment for many of the participants, and as every year, it is also the moment in which some of the submitted works start to appear in the social media. These works will, undoubtedly, condition the Aquascaping trend for the next year, so it is worth to keep an eye into them.

The full ranking is available through the IAPLC website, but I provide you a direct link to it, here.

In The Living Tank, we have thought to provide some information based on these results, with some facts and side rankings that you can find interesting.


But before that and first of all, congratulations to all the ranked participants, and especially to the winners. Achieving a position in the ranking requires lot of work and effort, and the level every year raises, so is not small success being there.

The Winners

This year we have not many surprises into the list, considering the trajectories of the winners:

1st Price for Takayuki Fukada (Winner of IAPLC 2015)
2nd Price for Chao Wang (10th IAPLC 2014)
3rd Price for Junichi Itakura (8th of IAPLC 2015)
4th Price for Tanaka Katsuki (14th of IAPLC 2015)

Congratulations to all of them from our side, and especially to Mr. Fukada, who wins for second year in a row. We are already dying to see these winner works!

Ranking for Countries

The world ranking is already in place, and provided on top, during the introduction of this post. However, we have thought that many people would like to know how well they did respect to their nationals peers in the contest. In order to do so, we have created partial rankings for each country with at least 10 participants ranked into the IAPLC 2016:

BrazilHong KongIranKoreaPolandSingaporeTurkey
ChinaHungaryItalyMalaysiaPortugalSpainUkraine
FranceIndiaJapanMexicoRomaniaTaiwanUnited States
GermanyIndonesiaKazakhstanMoroccoRussiaThailandVietnam

Curious Facts

And now, as promised, a few comments regarding some points derived from the results, which are quite interesting.

Professionals and famous are not better

This is a straight forward conclusion from the ranking. This is more difficult to observe into the world ranking but is more evident in the national rankings. Professional aquascapers are scoring high but not the highest, in general terms, with most of their works out of honor and winning prize categories. This is quite encouraging as tells the community that everyone can achieve good results, so next year, do not be afraid and take part of it!

Some examples of that are as follows:

Ngo Truon Thinh: Global 16, Vietnam: 3rd (out of 37).
Fernando Francischelli: Global 32, Brazil: 3rd (out of 46).
Luca Galarraga: Global 50, Brazil: 9th (out of 46).
Michael Leroy: Global 52, France: 4th (out of 26).
Andre Luiz Longarco: Global 66, Brazil: 11th (out of 46).
Dave Chow (Chow Wai Sun): Global 82, Hong Kong: 6th (out of 26).
Bernardo Salas: Global 183, Mexico: 2nd (out of 21).
Russel Higgings: Global 218, USA: 3rd (out of 12).
Adam Paszczela: Global 228, Poland: 6th (out of 37).
Stu Worral: Global 335, UK: 1st (out of 5).
Dmitry Parshin: Global 418, Russia: 4th (out of 18).
Jurijs Jutjajevs: Global 431, Germany:  12th (out of 28) .
Steven Chong: Global 672, USA: 5th (out of 12).
Lean Kee Chan: Global 751, Malaysia: 13th (out of 49).
Milos Nikolic: Global 785, Serbia: 2nd (out of 3).
George Farmer: Global 810, UK: 4th (out of 5).
Balasz Farkas: Global 1645, Hungary: 37th (out of 38).


And there are notable absences, like Oliver Knott and Tom Barr, who used not to participate into the IAPLC and then they have not been evaluated by professional judges. Other substantial absences are Frederic Fuss, James Chenng, Olivier Thebaud, Judy Prajitno Putra and Milan Ivanovic.

Geography matters

There are also a few interesting aspects of the results and participation. 

Japan is the king of the IAPLC

Not surprisingly, Japan is the country with more participants, with a total of 618 ranked participants (30% of total scored works). Considering that this event was mainly promoted by ADA, and the strongest presence of the brand in that country, the numbers are expected. Nonetheless, more is not necessarily better, as Japan has half of the works in the top 100 that should by random probability. China is the second country in number of participants, with 365 in total (18%), almost half than Japan. In terms of the top 100, they have got, however, the number that they should by pure probability.

Surprising low participation of some countries...

Like UK (5), USA(12), and Australia (4). Considering the wealth, role into the hobby and population ,is too low.

...and surprisingly high from others

Like Spain, with 80 ranked participants, the strongest presence of the whole European continent, and the 5th in terms of participation, below Japan, China, India and Indonesia. The Spaniard participation is being quite significant with some very good promises, like Juan Puchades, who scored 17 in IAPLC 2015 and 27 in this year. Bernart Hosta also reached a good 23rd position, result of perseverant work as seen by his various participation in the contest. NAscapers (Albert Escrihuela) also achieved a very good 54th position, followed closely by Miguel Angel Garcia (56th) and Carlos Guerrero (80th).  These results are above the expected number of inclusions in the top 100, and this added to the high participation of this country, Spain seems to be a very promising power in Aquascaping, to be closely followed in the next years.

Conclusion

We think that the championship of this year is very exciting. Pending on seeing the winner works, it clearly seems the level of the participants is increasing within the time, especially considering that brilliant aquascapers have seen their works falling down in the ranking. It is also good to see that new names are coming to the game, thing that brings diversity to the IAPLC and also makes harder the victory to settled aquascapers.

From The Living Tank we wanted to show the community that IAPLC is a hard contest but is open to everyone. From this site, we encourage you to participate into the IAPLC 2017. We will do it too, time permitting, so hopefully, see you in the ranks of the next year!

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Mauritius had 8 ranked participants. As I mentioned, we just kept the countries with at least 10 ranked participants. However, if you want to have the list, we can provide it and add it. Just let us know.

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