A New Sprint Points Method

I’ve fussed in the past about the weaknesses of FIS points in distance events, but they really are quite useful.  Sprint events, however, just don’t have an equivalently simple and useful numerical summary.  I’ve resorted to using the final finishing rank (i.e. what place you came in, after the elimination rounds), but I’ve never been particularly happy about it.

Currently, FIS awards traditional FIS points for the qualification times only.  After that, all that matters is what place you come in.  This means that I end up tracking three different values for each sprint result: FIS points, qualification rank and final rank.  None of these are particularly easy to combine in a sensible way.

For bird’s eye level analyses, just using the final rank is generally sufficient.  But when you start drilling down to the level of individual athletes, or small groups of athletes, it doesn’t work very well.

As an example, consider my posts looking at season to season improvements by individual skiers in distance events.  You’ll notice I haven’t given sprint racing the same treatment.  Modifying my script to do roughly the same analysis using finishing place in sprint races was easy, but the results didn’t make much sense.

The problem is that finishing place pretends as though each result (1st, 2nd, etc) is uniformly spaced along our range of performances.  But this just isn’t true.  The difference between 40th and 32nd may represent a legitimate improvement, or it may not.  You’d have to look at the time and FIS points, since neither result led to participation in the elimination rounds.  On the other hand, the difference between 35th and 27th is potentially quite large, since at least we’ve moved up into the realm of qualifying for the elimination rounds.

My ideal system would

• give you credit for being closer to qualifying, proportional to your percent back
• give you credit for qualifying
• give “bonuses” for each elimination round you survive

I’ve concocted something simple that does these three things.  It’s by no means perfect, so I fully expect tons of legit criticism.  But I do think that a measure like this is at least potentially useful for some specific purposes.

The way it works is this:

• Skiers not qualifying for the elimination rounds are simply assigned their FIS points
• Skiers qualifying for the elimination rounds are assigned “alternate” FIS points, evenly spaced from 0.00 to the qualification round FIS points of the 30th place skiers, with gaps inserted corresponding to each elimination round.

It’s much easier to show you this than explain it in words.  Here’s a table with the Men’s Classic World Cup sprint in Canmore on 2/06/2010.

An example of an alternative points calculation for sprint races using the men’s classic sprint from Canmore on 2/6/2010.

Name	Rank	Qualification Rank	FIS Points	Alternative Points
JOENSSON Emil	1	1	0	0
DAHL John Kristian	2	8	21.8	1.02
COLOGNA Dario	3	14	34.08	2.04
LIND Bjoern	4	6	15.26	3.06
CHEBOTKO Nikolay	5	17	37.74	4.08
PETERSON Teodor	6	12	32.16	5.1
PANKRATOV Nikolai	7	24	48.67	10.2
GLOEERSEN Anders	8	4	11.32	11.22
POLTARANIN Alexey	9	3	9.35	12.24
FRASNELLI Loris	10	16	37.51	13.26
KOOS Torin	11	2	5.75	14.28
TEICHMANN Axel	12	21	44.1	15.3
BRANDSDAL Eirik	13	11	31.49	20.4
PASINI Renato	14	13	33.8	22.95
LECCARDI Valerio	15	15	35.32	25.5
VYLEGZHANIN Maxim	16	29	56.83	30.6
PASINI Fabio	17	9	27.15	31.875
NEWELL Andrew	18	10	29.8	33.15
MCMURTRY Brent	19	25	51.37	34.425
WENZL Josef	20	28	56.78	35.7
CLAUSEN Kent-Ove	21	5	13.52	40.8
KUHN Stefan	22	7	16.56	42.075
WIDMER Philip	23	18	38.3	43.35
KERSHAW Devon	24	22	44.61	44.625
ONDA Yuichi	25	30	57.23	45.9
CROOKS Sean	26	19	41.63	51
KRECZMER Maciej	27	20	41.74	52.275
HAMILTON Simeon	28	23	45.85	53.55
KUZZY Garrott	29	26	55.48	54.825
COOK Chris	30	27	56.1	56.1
VON ALLMEN Peter	31	31	58.58	58.58
ANGERER Tobias	32	32	59.88	59.88
STROLIA Mantas	33	33	62.13	62.13
KREZELOK Janusz	34	34	63.99	63.99
CHEREPANOV Sergey	35	35	64.49	64.49
LEGKOV Alexander	36	36	64.61	64.61
KOSCHEVOY Yevgeniy	37	37	64.66	64.66
PERL Curdin	38	38	71.42	71.42
EIGENMANN Christoph	39	39	77.73	77.73
FREEMAN Kris	40	40	78.69	78.69
DARRAGON Roddy	40	40	78.69	78.69
NISHIKAWA Graham	42	42	80.94	80.94
HOFER David	43	43	81.84	81.84
TAMBORNINO Eligius	44	44	84.27	84.27
HINCKLEY Mike	45	45	86.35	86.35
MURRAY Paul	46	46	86.8	86.8
RICHMOND Kit	47	47	87.76	87.76
HARVEY Alex	48	48	88.66	88.66
FAFALIS Lefteris	49	49	89.9	89.9
SIM Ben	50	50	95.14	95.14
NARUSE Nobu	51	51	96.04	96.04
SEATON Harry	52	52	104.43	104.43
NOVOSELSKI Aleksei	53	53	108.15	108.15
SOMPPI Michael	54	54	108.94	108.94
MURRAY Ian	55	55	109.22	109.22
BURTON Joey	56	56	113.16	113.16
ARGUE Mike	57	57	113.22	113.22
MOREL Skeets	58	58	123.19	123.19
EILIFSEN Morten	59	59	128.26	128.26
YOUNG Andrew	60	60	129.16	129.16
KANGARLOO Beejan	61	61	129.5	129.5
GARNIER Gerard	62	62	131.92	131.92
SINNOTT Michael	62	62	131.92	131.92
KRAAS Oliver	64	64	133.55	133.55
BACH Ole-marius	65	65	135.02	135.02
TZINZOV Veselin	66	66	136.48	136.48
MUSGRAVE Andrew	67	67	136.93	136.93
GOLDSACK Drew	68	68	145.32	145.32
GREGG Brian	69	69	146.06	146.06
HANNEMAN Reese	70	70	173.66	173.66

The columns should be fairly self explanatory.  Notice that the first 6 places have points that are evenly spaced; then there’s a gap, and then 7-12 are evenly spaced.  13-15 are evenly spaced, then a gap, and so on.

I realize this doesn’t perfectly reflect what happened in the elimination rounds, particularly near places 13-15.  But I can’t really reconstruct lucky loser information from the data I have.  Nor does it reflect how close a particular heat was.  For instance, the top six are evenly spaced, even if they didn’t finish with equal gaps.

Still, I kind of like this.  It gives me a number I can use that is roughly comparable across those skiers who qualified and those who did not.  The numbers get smaller as you move through elimination rounds, with a built in “bonus” that reflects the fact that advancing through heats is not really a linear performance function ^<1.  The numbers for non-qualifying athletes are proportional to how close they were to qualifying.  Even the values assigned to skiers in the heats reflects, to some degree, how difficult it was to qualify: if the 31st place FIS points value is very low, the values of the top 30 skiers will be more compressed, and hence smaller.

One (of perhaps many) downsides is that these new values don’t have much concrete meaning, other than “lower is better”.  If you finished 5th, and are assigned 3.54 “points”, this number has no valid meaning in terms of traditional FIS points or percent back.  Still, it will allow me to do some most improved/unimproved posts for sprint racing down the road…