When most people say that World Cup skiers are animals, they probably mean they are fierce, strong competitors. I got my PhD in statistics in a department that found itself working quite often with very strong wildlife biology and ecology departments, so for me that reference leads me to think, “Well, what if they really [...] Related posts:
The connection is pretty obvious, actually. Both are mass start races that involve switching activities at least once during the race. The change in activities is certainly more extreme in triathlon, but you get my drift. Some people (like, say, me) complain on occasion that pursuit races in cross-country skiing place too great an emphasis [...] Related posts:
With more North Americans sojourning over to Europe to participate in high-level European racing that isn’t quite World Cups, I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at the OPA (or Alpen) Cup and Scandinavian Cup series in a bit more detail. As the name might imply, the Scandinavian Cup races are [...] Related posts:
My real job started up again this week, so there aren’t going to be very many 5-6 post’s per week happening for a while… On Monday I shared some summary statistics on a whole bunch of skiers showing how often they finishing in the top 3, top 5, etc. over their entire careers. The Vuelta [...] Related posts:
German biathlete Kati Wilhelm (sporting some delightful red hair, I might add) is the last (finally!) in my list of retiring athletes to cover. That Wikipedia link tells me that she was actually dubbed “Little Red Riding Hood” by the German press due to both her hair and a red hat she wore for all [...] Related posts:
Curious what people have been talking about in the comments section on FasterSkier.com lately ? Maybe you are, but too scared to look? I’ve got a solution for you. Or maybe you’re one of those people who would rather anonymously mock anonymous FasterSkier commenters, in which case this might make your mockery more time efficient, which [...] Related posts:
There are two somewhat different ways in which you could be considered a skating or classic specialist. First, you can be noticeably better at one technique than the other. Second, you could just only do races of one technique or the other. These two situations might overlap, or they might not. In any case, they [...] Related posts:
Just a quick post to toss up the final GC bump charts for the Vuelta. See here for an explanation of these plots. Related posts:Tour de France Charts Vuelta a España: Bump Charts Week In Review: Friday Sep 10th Related posts:
No pretty pictures this time, folks, sorry! Instead a couple of regular old sortable tables. No grand lesson here, just a simple question: how often can the best skiers in the world ski fast enough to finish in the top 3? The top 10? And so on. (I apologize that some of the column headers [...] Related posts:
Here’s what’s been happening at Statistical Skier this week: There’s another doping story in the news, providing plenty of red meat for commentary. I humbly contributed some graphs of Pankratov’s results over the years, which hopefully provides some context for his ability level and career. Yeah, there’s some big bike race not in France still [...] Related posts:
Vincent Defrasne is a French biathlete who retired this year (only one more of these after this one, I promise!). I can find nine podium finishes throughout his career, including a gold at the Turin Olympics (12.5km pursuit) and a bronze at the 2007 World Biathlon Championships. In addition to these individual accomplishments, he’s been a [...] Related posts:
The mystery skier in question is currently active (i.e. not retired) and has reached the podium in at least one WC, OWG or WSC race per season for 11 straight seasons. This is the longest currently active podium streak that I am aware of. I provided some graphs to help: As a few people correctly [...] Related posts:
The following graphs are the results for a currently active cross country skier who has the longest active streak of at least one podium finish (WC, OWG, WSC) in a distance event in each season. Their streak currently stands at 11 seasons. The ages on the x axis should narrow it down a ton, obviously. [...] Related posts:
Another rest day in the Vuelta yesterday gave me another chance to update the GC bumps plots. See my first post on the Vuelta for an explanation of the colors and stuff. Click through for a full version of the GC by team graph below. var AdBrite_Title_Color = '0000FF'; var AdBrite_Text_Color = '000000'; var AdBrite_Background_Color [...] Related posts:
So the big news in XC over the last few days has obviously been Russian skier Nikolai Pankratov being caught with some, shall we say, suspicious materials. The first thing I do when I hear things like this are of course to look up his results like the last time…First Pankratov’s distance results: The early [...] Related posts:
My real job is quickly approaching again as we move into fall. I’ve stockpiled plenty of material, but things will inevitably slow down a bit. I also have a few big projects on my plate related to Statistical Skier that I’ll be talking more about in the next week or two, so I have plenty [...] Related posts:
Next up among biathlon retirements is French star Sandrine Bailly. She has numerous Biathlon World Cup victories to her name and has been an integral part of the French biathlon relay team. One notable victory links her to another retiring skier, Martina Beck. These women actually shared the gold medal at the 2003 Biathlon World [...] Related posts:
An old Dartmouth teammate of mine contacted me recently and asked if I’d be interested in looking at some triathlon data. He has some ulterior motives here, as his sister is a very good triathlete. Since he volunteered to gather the data himself (I believe from triathlon.org mostly) and send it to me, I just [...] Related posts:
There’s been some commentary over the last several years remarking that the Norwegian men, usually quite dominant, have been struggling to crush their competitors into tiny little pieces. From the perspective of US skiing fans that might seem absurd, but for better or for worse, Norway has exceedingly high expectations. It occurred to me, though, [...] Related posts:
As promised from long ago, we have the General Classification bumps plots for the first nine stages of the Vuelta a España. Both versions, all together and split by team are below the fold. Don’t worry, more skiing content is in the works for the rest of this week… And here’s the version split by [...] Related posts: