Inaugurated in 1991, the World Cup began as an attempt to create a regular season under its management in tandem with the ITU Triathlon World Championship race.
[2] At its founding the first twenty athletes each race would earn points dependent on their placing and the athletes with the most points at the end of the season would be named the World cup champion.
However, due ranking being based on an athlete's four highest scoring appearances that year along with the fact that world series races were worth 2.5 times as much as a world cup meant that no contribution was made to any athlete in the top 10.
After 2014 world cup points totals were increased awarding first place 500 points and each subsequent athlete 7.5% less points that the athlete before for the first 50 athletes as long as they made the time cut (5% to the winner's time in the men's event and 8% in the women's event).
[4] The World Cup champions are based on the final accumulated point totals as earned in each year's series of World Cup races, with double points awarded for results achieved in the ITU Triathlon World Championship race.