Once again, many thanks to Skaði Nordic for sponsoring this week’s Week In Review. Here’s what been cooking: Race snapshots from racing since last Friday: the Davos classic WC, the men’s and women’s biathlon WC pursuit, the Davos WC sprint. Finally, another biathlon race, this time the men’s and women’s distance events. Some recaps and [...] Related posts:
How embarrassing is it for our sport that no one seems to be able to reliably count the number of World Cup victories of our best athletes? Here’s the deal. Marit Björgen has attracted some attention lately for the number of total WC victories to her name, which is generally thought to be at least [...] Related posts:
They aren’t what stat-heads like myself would choose to do “serious” stuff, but World Cup points are what makes the XC world go round. FIS provides a few tools for looking up athlete’s WC points here and here. They’re pretty decent, by their standards, allowing you to switch between Overall, Distance and Sprint points, filter [...] Related posts:
Great day for Sara Studebaker in 21st! The results look a little shook up on the men’s side, as well as the women’s to some degree. Lowell Bailey had a decent result despite some dodgy shooting. Related posts:Race Snapshot: IBU World Cup 1 Women Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Women’s Sprint Race Snapshot: IBU WC [...] Related posts:
So US coach Chris Grover mentioned to FasterSkier.com that he thought that when Kikkan Randall qualifies in the top ten that’s a really good sign that she has a good chance to make the finals. I did this once before with an interesting quote of his, and I feel kind of bad. I’m not trying [...] Related posts:
One of the interesting things we can look at with sprint races is differences between the various heats themselves, rather than individual skiers. Interestingly, reconstructing this information, namely who was in what quarterfinal or semifinal, using just the split times took a little bit of thought. Not a monumental challenge, but it was a bit [...] Related posts:
Once again thanks to Jan at WorldofXC.com for providing the split time data for the sprint races on Sunday. Very different developments of heat times in this race compared to the last two sprint races. Let’s check out the women first: Note that these are just the raw times from the heats, so it does [...] Related posts:
This recap is going to be fairly short. I’m going to pass over Kris Freeman and Kikkan Randall, since neither had spectacular races but in neither case does it seem particularly significant to me. Freeman reportedly was recovering from a cold and still managed a decent, but unimpressive race. Randall had a legitimately bad race, [...] Related posts:
In my race recap for the Davos distance race I noted the strong performance of Masako Ishida, and pointed out what an extreme classic specialist she is. A certain world famous XC skiing journalist wanted to know if the conventional wisdom he’d heard was correct, that Japan’s skiers typically do better in classic skiing overall. [...] Related posts:
I’ll have a separate post covering some of the North Americans tomorrow. As usual, the choice of athletes to focus on is whatever strikes my fancy. If you have suggestions/requests after each race, let me know in the comments of the race snapshot posts. The first thing I want to note about Saturday’s distance races [...] Related posts:
Solid day for North America with 5 in the heats, and of course Kikkan’s second sprint podium of the season. Just watched the video of the women’s final and there’s no question Kowalczyk changed lanes when she wasn’t supposed to. Definitely hindered Randall, but I’m not sure she would have caught Follis. Related posts:Race Snapshot: [...] Related posts:
Helena Ekholm, back on top; tough day on the range for the Americans (and Magdalena Neuner). 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:
The Norwegian men continue their dominance of the biathlon circuit: Related posts:Race Snapshot: IBU World Cup 1 Women Race Snapshots: IBU World Cup 1 Men Race Snapshots: IBU WC 1 Men’s Sprint Related posts:
Interesting results on the men’s side; so far Björgen’s just on another planet. Full versions below the fold. Related posts:Race Snapshot: Gällivare Race Snapshots: Kuusamo Classic 5/10km Race Snapshot: Düsseldorf Sprints Related posts:
The XC World Cup scene moves on to Davos, Switzerland this weekend, while the biathlon World Cup already resumed today in Austria. Here’s what you may have missed this past week: Race snapshots for the following races: Düsseldorf sprints, men’s biathlon sprint, men’s/women’s biathlon pursuits, and just today the men’s/women’s biathlon sprints. A recap of the [...] Related posts:
Decent race for Tim Burke, very good day for Sara Studebaker. Full versions below the fold. Related posts:Race Snapshot: Gällivare Race Snapshot: IBU World Cup 1 Women Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Women’s Sprint Related posts:
This is a bit after the fact, but I can’t let good data go to waste. Once again, thanks to Jan from WorldofXC.com for providing the data on times from the heats. Ok, let’s get in our time machine and blast our way back to Finland for the women’s sprint: All of the percent back [...] Related posts:
As I was perusing some of the other assorted race results from last weekend, the FIS races in Norway caught my eye. Of course, most of the press went to Petter Northug, with his victory in Saturday’s 30km skate race, presumably indicating that his fitness is returning. A little further down the results sheet, but [...] Related posts:
Yesterday I posted some data looking at a popular hobby horse within the US skiing community: Andrew Newell’s alleged tendency to ski really fast in the qualification round and then not advance far (or not far enough) in the heats. Last night a friend emailed me to let me know that I kind of screwed [...] Related posts:
A couple of big names were doing some smaller FIS races this past weekend. Petter Northug is trying to regain his form after a rough start to his season mixed with some illness, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen is recovering from a shoulder injury and Odd-Bjørn Hjelmeset is trying to work his way onto the Norweigan squad for [...] Related posts: