Just a few short notes focusing on the North Americans in the classic sprint yesterday. First the men: One thing that stands out to me is that Harvey was actually skiing slightly faster than Kershaw all day. Of course, the differences are very small (~1 second), but it highlights how large an impact the make-up [...] Related posts:
If you’ve ever wondered why I haven’t attempted more statistical machinations to predict race results, today’s races are an example of why I haven’t. Actually, I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to build some models that will predict performance, but what I’ve learned is that skiers are too variable for reasonably simple models [...] Related posts:
Once again thanks to my data connection over at WorldofXC.com for the sprint splits data. The overall picture for the women’s race is about what you’d expect: Petra Majdic basically crushed everyone in sight, and in fact the closest anyone really came to her was in qualification. After a rough start to her season, this [...] Related posts:
Great day for North America, overall. Fantastic races by Kershaw and Harvey and strong efforts by Freeman and Randall (for a classic sprint, not her specialty, certainly not Freeman’s). Newell probably isn’t thrilled with his 12th place, given how much stumbling around it sounded like he did during the semis, but it’s not a terrible [...] Related posts:
These race snapshot graphs are quite a bit different from usual. First, today’s pursuit is essentially an old style two day pursuit with the techniques reversed (skating yesterday, classic today). So the stage results from today include yesterday’s time (minus the bonus seconds from yesterday). Hence, my race snapshot graphs won’t compare today’s stage to [...] Related posts:
Happy (Almost) New Year! And thanks once again to Skadi Nordic for sponsoring this week in review. As the Tour de Ski get’s rolling, here’s what we’ve been up to this week: We looked a bit more closely at the link between qualifying in the top ten and going on to do well in the [...] Related posts:
I debated whether these snapshot graphs would be sensible for the prologue (and also some other TdS stages as well) since the race formats during the Tour are a bit odd, so comparisons to the past are fairly tenuous. Also, I think the prologue event is kind of dumb, but that’s just my own bias. [...] Related posts:
Back in September I wrote a post looking at the supposed woes of Norway’s male distance team. The bottom line was that, yes, by various measures things haven’t been looking as good lately for the Norwegian men’s distance squad. With the first period of racing completed, and more rumblings in Norway about their poor performance, [...] Related posts:
Ok, so this isn’t much of a preview. Rather it’s just a bird’s eye view of what happened last year using some bumps plots. Here’s how things played out for the men: The median skier can sort of be thought of as the “peloton”. As you can see, not much happened until Stage 5, the [...] Related posts:
Continuing on from my last post on North American distance skiers, let’s jump right in with the sprinters, starting with the men: No fancy metrics here, just what place people finished in. Once again, red is this season, blue is last year’s Olympics. Alex Harvey’s sprint race in Kuusamo was unusually good for him. Simi [...] Related posts:
With the first period of WC racing in the books and the next one just around the corner, I’m going to look back at the results of the North American skiers so far this season. The theme of this post is context and expectations. One of the reasons that I started this blog was that [...] Related posts:
My post on the differing performance of Japanese skiers by technique (classic vs. freestyle) got a lot of positive responses and a few requests that I use the same methods on some other countries. First up is Italy. I’ve tweaked and refined my model a fair bit, hopefully for the better. The basic idea is [...] Related posts:
This is a follow-up post to an earlier entry where I noted an off-hand comment by US coach Chris Grover that when Kikkan Randall qualifies in the top ten in a sprint race, that this is a good sign that she has a good chance of making it to the finals. I looked at some [...] Related posts:
This is a follow-up post to an earlier entry where I noted an off-hand comment by US coach Chris Grover that when Kikkan Randall qualifies in the top ten in a sprint race, that this is a good sign that she has a good chance of making it to the finals. I looked at some [...] Related posts:
The Statistical Skier is going to take a much needed holiday break to visit the Statistical In-Laws and hopefully do some skiing, but not much statistics. Regular posting should resume on Monday. Enjoy your holidays! Related posts:Welcome! Week In Review: Friday Nov 5th Related posts:
Just as I did yesterday, let’s take a closer look at the results form Saturday’s World Cup mass start race in La Clusaz, France, this time focusing on the North Americans. As I discussed yesterday, we’re going to use percent-back difference plots from mass start or pursuit races to evaluate each skier’s race, since the [...] Related posts:
Picking up from my post yesterday, we’ll move on to Kris Freeman: Freeman told FasterSkier that blood sugar issues weren’t a problem, but that he simply didn’t have a great race on Saturday. Well, it’s quite clear from this percent-back difference plot what happens when he does have blood sugar problems, as he did last [...] Related posts:Gällivare Recap: North Americans Kuusamo WC Recap: North Americans Davos Recap: Distance – North Americans
Saturday was the first long mass start race of the World Cup season in La Clusaz, France, and along with mass start races come difficulties in measuring performance in a sensible manner. The women’s field didn’t help matters by having the top three ski away from the field. So you end up with some odd [...] Related posts:How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the F-Factor (Part 1) How I Learned To Start Worrying and Hate the F-Factor (Part 2) Davos Recap: Distance
Kind of a rough day for the Americans today in biathlon, but some solid Canadian results. Brendan Green and Scot Perras both had good races as well as Zina Kocher. Related posts:Race Snapshot: IBU World Cup 1 Women Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Women’s Sprint Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Men/Women’s Pursuit Related posts:Race Snapshot: IBU World Cup 1 Women Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Women’s Sprint Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Men/Women’s Pursuit
I think there were high hopes for Kris Freeman in today’s 30km, particularly after yesterdays monster article in FasterSkier, but I still suspect he’s likely to do better in 15km events. Still, not a terrible race for him at all, and a good day all around for the North Americans. Once again, though, the women’s [...] Related posts:Marit Bjoergen’s Best Freestyle Race Race Snapshot: IBU World Cup 1 Women Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Men/Women’s Pursuit