Week In Review: Friday Feb 11th

Another down week with World Cup action on the cross-country side of things, but Drammen and World Champs are just around the corner.

Last weekend saw the return of the Rybinsk World Cups, a pursuit and a sprint. We also had the first weekend of biathlon World Cups over here in the US with some pursuits and sprints; and then more sprints this week.
I editorialized somewhat on the recurring complaints about the strengths and weaknesses of athlete ranking lists.
We assessed just how well (or poorly) the Rybinsk races were, along with recapping some of the specific performances.
I also checked in on some of the US results from the Scandinavian Cup races over the past few weekends.
I weighed in, lightly, on the somewhat odd debate that flared up at FasterSkier over whether men and women should race the same distances.
I decided that some graphs I made for looking at the performance of the Norwegian men’s distance team were interesting enough to apply to several other nations as well.
Finally, I lamented the fact that cross country’s sprint racing format involves five quarterfinal heats. I feel dirty just writing that.