Update: I kind of messed this post up a bit. It does change the picture somewhat, so see below for edits. There are several topics in North American XC skiing that are fairly predictable. One of those is that anytime Andrew Newell posts a blazing fast qualifying time but fails to advance to the finals [...] Related posts:
It was a pretty decent day for North America on Saturday with Kikkan Randall’s 2nd place, some solid performances by Chandra Crawford and Dasha Gaiazova (8th and 27th) and a mostly average race for Andrew Newell (13th). Many thanks to Jan at WorldofXC.com for providing me with some data that I don’t usually have access [...] Related posts:
Just the biathlon race snapshots today. Kind of bummed I didn’t get up and watch the men’s race, as it sounds like it was quite the thriller. I’ll have some posts up about the XC races in Düsseldorf tomorrow and Tuesday. As always, full versions below the fold. Related posts:Race Snapshot: Gällivare Race Snapshot: IBU World [...] Related posts:
Tim Burke, getting back into the swing of things it seems…full version below the fold. Related posts:Race Snapshots: Kuusamo Sprint Race Snapshots: Kuusamo Classic 5/10km Race Snapshot: IBU World Cup 1 Women Related posts:
Nice job, Kikkan! Full versions below the fold. Related posts:Race Snapshot: Gällivare Race Snapshots: Kuusamo Sprint Race Snapshot: IBU World Cup 1 Women Related posts:
Thanks once again to Skadi Nordic for sponsoring Week In Review! They’re making some pretty cool custom ski scrapers these days… It was a full, jumbled week here at Statistical Skier: Last weekend saw the rest of the Kuusamo Nordic Opener, with race snapshot graphs for the classic and skate portions of the three day [...] Related posts:
Another cold, cold day in Östersund today, but a great one for Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen and Germany’s Miriam Gössner. Full version below the fold. Related posts:Most Improved: Women’s Sprint Race Snapshot: Gällivare Race Snapshots: Kuusamo Sprint Related posts:
Race snapshot graphs from today’s men’s 20km distance race. Full version below the fold. Related posts:Race Snapshot: Gällivare Race Snapshots: Kuusamo Sprint Race Snapshots: Kuusamo Classic 5/10km Related posts:
Who impressed me most in the races last weekend in Kuusamo? Well, I have to agree with one of my commenters in picking Germany’s Nicole Fessel. I’m not crazy enough to stay up till 1am to watch the races live on the internet, so I only have the results to go by. Still, how impressive [...] Related posts:
I saw this survey a while back, but had forgotten about it. Now I see they’ve written up a little summary that has been published both on SkiTrax and FasterSkier. The actual survey can be found here. Why am I writing about this? Well, the summary includes some basic statistics. One of the things that [...] Related posts:
Can’t leave out the poor biathletes, now can we? Biathlon doesn’t have a point system like FIS points, so these will all be using raw percent back. If you’re familiar with these sorts of measures, you’ll notice that percent backs in biathlon are frequently quite a bit higher. For a variety of reasons, it’s harder [...] Related posts:
Now let’s turn to the US women biathletes. The women haven’t managed to produce any results comparable to Tim Burke’s recent success, but there are a ton of young skiers it seems trying to change that. I’ve noticed a lot of collegiate cross country skiers switching over (or maybe back) to biathlon after graduated, and [...] Related posts:
Marit Bjørgen commented somewhere that her win at the WC opener in Gällivare, SWE was “the best skate race of her life”. Sadly, I can’t find where I read that, otherwise I’d have a link for you. Obviously, I found that kind of intriguing. Let’s look at Bjørgen’s race in a bit more detail: This [...] Related posts:
My previews for the US biathlon teams will be briefer, which reflects the fact that I know less about the US biathlon team, and biathlon in general. Feel free to correct me in the comments if I get anything horribly wrong. For example, I’m going to take a very simplistic approach to who’s actually on [...] Related posts:
My previews for the US biathlon teams will be briefer, which reflects the fact that I know less about the US biathlon team, and biathlon in general. Feel free to correct me in the comments if I get anything horribly wrong. For example, I’m going to take a very simplistic approach to who’s actually on [...] Related posts:
As always, there’s lots of stuff I could focus on, but we can’t have everything. As is usually the case, the weekend was a bit of a mixed bag for the North Americans. Kris Freeman continued to look quite strong despite some bad luck with his poles. Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw had much stronger [...] Related posts:
This recap of this past weekend’s WC races will be a little different than before. Rather than focus on individual performances, I’d like to look at the races as a group. Stage race formats are relatively new to the cross country world, and these short stage races are even newer. Since they are roughly modeled [...] Related posts:
Use some caution interpreting these, due to the unusual race circumstances today. These graphs apply only to today’s freestyle portion of the Kuusamo races, and each skier’s percent back (and hence their FIS points) can be influenced by the race tactics on the course, since we were dealing with a pursuit-style start and people were [...] Related posts:
Another decent day for Kris Freeman and Kikkan Randall it seems: Full version below the fold (click on them to see the full size image): Related posts:Race Summaries: Introduction Week In Review: Friday Nov 12th Assessing The Weekend’s Racing Related posts:
Happy Thanksgiving! The racing season is off and running: We kicked things off with race snapshot graphs of the opening weekend World Cup races in Gällivare, Sweden, which I subsequently improved to include a focus on the particular technique used in that race. Thanks to the several commenters who requested the change. I delved a [...] Related posts: