The 2015–16 ISU Speed Skating World Cup, officially the ISU World Cup Speed Skating 2015–2016, was a series of international speed skating competitions that ran the entire season. The season started on 13 November 2015 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and ended with the final on 13 March 2016 in Heerenveen, Netherlands.[1]
In total, six competition weekends were held at five different locations, 18 cups were contested (nine for men, and nine for women), and 88 races took place. Additionally, there were two Grand World Cups, one for men and one for women, in which all individual races, regardless of distance, counted.
Note: the men's 5000 and 10000 metres were contested as one cup, and the women's 3000 and 5000 metres were contested as one cup, as indicated by the color coding.[1]
In addition, there were two combination cups, the allround combination and the sprint combination. For the allround combination, the distances were 1500 + 5000 metres for men, and 1500 + 3000 metres for women. For the sprint combination, the distances were 500 + 1000 metres, both for men and women. These cups were contested only in World Cup 5, in Stavanger, Norway.
Entry rules
Qualification criteria
In order to qualify, skaters had to achieve the following results in ISU events, international competitions or national championships between 1 July 2014 and the entry deadline for the competition concerned.[1]
For the mass start and team pursuit events, skaters who had achieved any one of the above results were qualified. However, every ISU member nation was allowed to enter a maximum of one skater per gender who had not achieved any of these results, provided that they had achieved a 1500 m result of 1:57.50 (men) or 2:10.00 (women).[1]
