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Joran

Ask, and ye shall receive. Christopher Tassava noted at the link above that the top four female sprinters on Sunday all had a double-L in their names. Coincidence? A mere statistical anomaly? Or should American and Canadian parents start naming their children Allan, Allison or Ellen? I’m being kind of silly here, of course, but [...] Related posts:

  1. Gadflies & Punching Bags
  2. Podium Heartbreak
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Following up on the previous post looking at distance results, the same graphs for the sprinters. Obviously, sprinting hasn’t been around as long and there’s typically only one sprint race per championship event, so “results per race” is kind of a silly metric to use, but whatever. There’s a lot less to say here, so [...] Related posts:

  1. How Well Prepared Are World Cup Rookies? (Part 2a: Sprint)
  2. Mid-Season Review: North American Sprint
  3. US World Champs Team Selection

These previews will be very general and quick, basically just charting the overall performance of the major nations in championship events (Olympics and World Championships) over time. We’ll start with the men’s distance events: The measurement here is “results per race”, so for instance the Norwegian men averaged 1 Gold medal per race in the [...] Related posts:

  1. How Well Prepared Are World Cup Rookies? (Part 1a: Distance)
  2. How Well Prepared Are World Cup Rookies? (Part 1b: Distance)
  3. Is It Panic Time For The Norwegian Men’s Distance Skiers?

I’m not going to spend much time on this topic, since obviously it wasn’t a great day for the North Americans, but we can at least put a few of the results in some sort of context using my new-fangled graph, starting with some of the men: I’m sticking with the folks who’ve done more [...] Related posts:

  1. Gällivare Recap: North Americans
  2. Kuusamo WC Recap: North Americans
  3. Davos Recap: Distance – North Americans

After reviewing yesterday’s sprint race in Drammen, Norway it’s time to get caught up on the distance racing action from the day before. And lucky for you I’m going to use some new graphs that I’ve been working on for a while. They’re similar to the biathlon graphs I introduced last week, with a few [...] Related posts:

  1. La Clusaz Recap: Distance Mass Start
  2. La Clusaz Recap: North American Women
  3. Rybinsk: Pursuit Recap

I’d say someone has this freestyle sprinting thing dialed in pretty well, wouldn’t you? And what a race from Alex Harvey, much better sprint race for him. I have the heat times again, so an analysis of those will be in the works for tomorrow… Related posts:Race Snapshot: Davos WC Sprint Tour de Ski Freestyle [...] Related posts:

  1. Race Snapshot: Davos WC Sprint
  2. Tour de Ski Freestyle Sprint Recap
  3. Race Snapshot: Liberec Freestyle Sprint

Not such a hot day for the North Americans, sadly. Hopefully they’ll rebound for World Championships. A hearty congrats to Daniel Rickardsson and Marit Björgen, although some might say that they are now very unlikely to win a gold medal at World Champs. Oh well! Related posts:Marit Bjoergen’s Best Freestyle Race Race Snapshot: Davos WC [...] Related posts:

  1. Marit Bjoergen’s Best Freestyle Race
  2. Race Snapshot: Davos WC Classic
  3. Race Snapshot: TdS Classic Sprint

Thanks once again to Skaði Nordic for bringing you this week’s Week In Review: We started off with the last of the IBU World Cup races in Maine, including the pursuits and mass starts. I’m debuted some new-fangled biathlon results plots for race snapshots and for looking at individual skiers. The individual plots are something [...] Related posts:

  1. Week In Review: Friday Nov 12th
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Previously, I discussed the differences in race penalties between North America and Europe.  Now we’ll continue with a really quick look at how race penalties have changed over time in North America. This will be really short and sweet, so here’s the graph: So clearly, this only goes back around 10 seasons (and doesn’t include [...] Related posts:La Clusaz Recap: North American Men La Clusaz Recap: North American Women Mid-Season Recap: North American Distance

There were only a handful of Americans (and no Canadians) who did the freestyle distance race in Beitostølen, Norway on Sunday, so we’ll cover them and Andrew Musgrave in one post. First a rough look at how each performance stacked up in terms of FIS points: By FIS points, that’s about as fast as Arritola [...] Related posts:

  1. Kuusamo WC Recap: North Americans
  2. Davos Recap: Distance – North Americans
  3. U23 Pursuit Recap: Men

A reader sent me an email over the weekend regarding the discussion that’s popped up over the fact that women compete in far shorter distances than the men in cross country skiing. He suggested that looking at men’s and women’s road marathon times (running) might be interesting. I did him one better and grabbed the [...] Related posts:

  1. Running: What’s The Relationship Between Distance And Pace?
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  3. Week In Review: Friday Jan 14th

Continuing on from earlier today, we’ll turn to the North American women’s results from Saturday’s classic race in Beitostølen, Norway. As before, we’ll start with just a rough look at FIS points: Once again, I’ll repeat my caution about how seriously these folks may or may not have been taking these races, having just arrived [...] Related posts:

  1. Gällivare Recap: North Americans
  2. Kuusamo WC Recap: North Americans
  3. Davos Recap: Distance – North Americans

A number of Americans and Canadians participated in some big FIS races in Beitostølen, Norway this past weekend. Not all the results have migrated over to the FIS site yet, so I’m just going to focus on the classic distance races from Saturday. We should keep in mind throughout that, from what I’ve read, many [...] Related posts:

  1. Weekend FIS Races: Andrew Musgrave
  2. Davos Recap: Distance – North Americans
  3. La Clusaz Recap: Distance Mass Start

Biathlon’s cool in part because there’s so much more data to play with. One seemingly minor thing I’ve been struggling with is how best to graph an athlete’s overall race results and their shooting statistics on the same graph. The obvious answer of just overlaying them and including a second y axis (since shooting accuracy [...] Related posts:

  1. Is Biathlon More Volatile Than Cross Country?
  2. US Biathlon Preview: Men
  3. US Biathlon Preview: Women

With the biathlon World Cups taking a turn through my childhood backyard these past few weekends, I’ve been spending more time trying to come up with some nice biathlon plots. Fairly early on with my race snapshot graphs I switched over with the cross country ones to show each athlete’s results compared to all their [...] Related posts:

  1. Biathlon and Cross Country Volatility Trends
  2. Race Snapshot: Gällivare
  3. US Biathlon Preview: Men

These graphs will look the same, but I tried something a bit different for these. Mass start races in biathlon are similar to those in cross country in that they tend to lead to tighter races and hence lower percent back values than in other race formats. So I’m trying out restricting these versions to [...] Related posts:

  1. Race Snapshot: TdS Classic Mass Start
  2. Race Snapshot: IBU WC 4 Mass Start
  3. Race Snapshot: IBU WC 6 Men’s Mass Start

What a crazy story for Lowell Bailey today! Too bad, hopefully he can channel the frustration into skiing fast next time around. Related posts:Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Men/Women’s Pursuit Race Snapshot: IBU WC 2 Men’s Pursuit Race Snapshot: IBU WC 2 Women’s Pursuit Related posts:

  1. Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Men/Women’s Pursuit
  2. Race Snapshot: IBU WC 2 Men’s Pursuit
  3. Race Snapshot: IBU WC 2 Women’s Pursuit