Felix, I have learned a great deal from many WFD competitors as well as personal experience.  I took the time to email a few competitors and get their take on technique and also how they trained.  Sam LeCompte, the winner of last NAMM's WFD said he used primarily his middle fingers to get his scores.  He said that he did lots of short runs at 10 secs. to establish a baseline for what speed he had the potential to achieve.  Once he did that he would just work on endurance by pushing that same speed past 10 seconds until he got to 1 minute.  My drum teach Eric Okamoto who won 1st place 2 Namm's ago tends to use his all of his fingers while using a modified Moeller technique to help him out.  Mike Mangini uses only his wrists to move the sticks while tencing up his whole arm very tightly to achieve this.  I think its very neat that all the competitors seem to have their own technique that seems to work for them.  

What I have mostly learned is that fingers seem to be one of the winning factors in the WFD.  Jotan the world record holder used his fingers to achieve his record of 1199 strokes in a minute ( nearly 20 strokes a second ).  In my experience the best way to work the technique your fingers and to make them work best for you is to play at a slow tempo making perfect strokes for 10 - 15 minutes straight using only the muscles in your fingers.  Then gradually picking it 2 or 3 bpm on the metronome and playing for another 10 - 15 minutes.  In this way you work the muscle memory into your fingers and then speed comes naturally.  I have noticed that once I work it into my muscle memory and let my fingers do the work I was able to go for extended periods of time without getting tired and my speed picked up considerably.  The hardest part of it was keeping my wrist muscles from turning on and tensing up.  If you do like my instructor Eric, then you can use your wrists in conjunction with the fingers by using Moeller.  In other words the wrist would be doing a stroke in place of the fingers (allowing the fingers to rest) and then the fingers would back the wrist stroke up with 2 strokes before the wrist came back in again (or wrist - downstroke and fingers - 2 upstrokes).

There's so much to learn, and I've only just grazed the surface.  But, I would have to say that the best way to learn is to try out everything and even come up with your own unique ideas and try them out.  You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain.  

i've never had a go on a drumometer, but i'd like to. i think it could be a very useful tool when used in conjunction with a metronome, and provided that good technique is maintained.

Most financially successful could be Phil Collins.  He's won a bunch of Grammy's, an Oscar and does a lot of composition, performing and producing.  Just a thought.

Man, I can't believe Jim Kerr is on that list, let alone so high!  Haven't heard anything abou the Simple Minds in years.

Does wfd mean worlds fastest drummer?

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!  You got to grove and that is impossible to do in a speed contest.  

Wanna hear me play Take the "A" Train?

Wanna hear it again?

You missed a note.

Mike Mangini beat out Art Verdi with more than 1200 hits in a minute's time

Got that right.