Earlier this week I tweeted a little nugget I stumbled across: that Jessie Diggins now owns around half of all top 30 results for US skiers 21 years old or younger over the past two decades. In contrast, the most any single Norwegian contributes over the same time period is around 10% of all their [...] Related posts:Best Young Sprint Skiers: 2009-2010 Should Jessie Diggins Be On The A-Team? Is Sprinting A Young Person’s Game?
Like last time, we’re looking to quantify somehow the average difference in speed (in sec/km) between classic and skating. Only this time we’re focusing in on sprints. Organizing the times for the heats is a bit of a challenge, so I’m only going to consider the qualification round. So essentially we’re just looking at speed [...] Related posts:Technique Specialization Improved Gällivare Plots: Technique Focus Technique Preferences: Italy
I received an email recently from a reader who pointed out to me that Marit Bjørgen completed the 30k classic mass start in Oslo this season in 1:26:09.8, last year at World Championships Therese Johaug did the same course, mass start, skating in only 1:23:45.1, which is only a difference of about 2.8%. Surely, skating [...] Related posts:
Since I was pondering Marcus Hellner’s season just the other day, I thought I’d take a closer look at how his result tend to shift over the course of a season. He has struggled during the later parts of this season, but has that been true before in general? Here are his results in distance [...] Related posts:
I’ve commented on this before, but here’s a slightly more comprehensive look at the historical record. Here is a plot showing Kikkan Randall’s World Cup sprint results as well as those for any other American woman: Note the handful of top twenties just this season, and there’s certainly more results clustered around 30th or so, [...] Related posts:
It struck me glancing at the results last weekend that I feel like Sweden has been having a bit of a sub-par year. Which might seem a little strange, given Johan Olsson’s recent return to form, but hear me out. Certainly, they’ve had some skiers with some great results. But I feel like overall they’ve [...] Related posts:
Since I’ve been neglecting biathlon a bit lately, I figured I owed everyone a biathlon post, particularly given the shocking 5th place finish the other day by Susan Dunklee. So here is some historical data on how the US and Canada have performed at WBCs over the years. First, measured by finishing place: The blue [...] Related posts:
The return of Emil Jönsson: I’ve removed a few times from folks who fell and had extremely outlying times. Jönsson sort of owned this one all day, it seems. Only a moderate difference between the semifinals this time (with the outlying times, just for fun): On the women’s side, Bjørgen was able to hold off [...] Related posts:
Let’s check in on where we’re at with Kikkan Randall and Devon Kershaw’s World Cup points situations. First, Kershaw: I finally figured out a decently efficient way to track WC points during a season, that requires only a minimal amount of data entry by hand. Cologna’s going to walk away with this one, obviously, but [...] Related posts:
The never ending question! A commenter asked about this the other day, and I’m happy to oblige, despite the fact that I’ve covered this general topic several times before. The difficulties with extrapolating from WJC results start with the fact that they comprise at most 2-3 races from a skier’s entire season. And the posts [...] Related posts:
Given the comments on my last post, I thought I’d verify things by altering the second graph to display the race type: Now the difference is very clear. I’ve combined the mass start and pursuit races into just one category (Mass). So clearly for the men the story here is different race tactics in mass [...] Related posts:
Sometimes you have some data and a specific question. Other times, you have some data, and you just sort of noodle around with it aimlessly. Sadly, I’ve been known to do that just for fun. I know, I’m a nerd. So I was looking at the gaps between 1st and 2nd place finishers in World [...] Related posts:
I’m a bit pressed for time at the moment, so not much commentary on these. They are just the updated versions of the graphs I showed on Wednesday, giving some historical context for the results at WJC & U23′s for the US and Canada. WJC – USA WJC – CAN U23 – USA U23 – [...] Related posts:
World Junior/U23s are underway, of course, in the exotic locale of Turkey. Monday wasn’t a spectacular day for the North Americans in the WJC freestyle sprint. For some quick context, here’s a look at the historical results in each discipline for the US: I’m just using finishing place here, rather than FIS points, since I [...] Related posts:
As always, thanks to Jan at worldofxc.com for the heat time data… I’m beginning to get a feel for the relationship between heat times and sprint courses. It’s hard, cause I’m not actually there skiing on the courses, so I do the best I can reading about them. But it seems this course was pretty [...] Related posts:
A commenter on Monday’s post noted that there are some folks fairly close behind Kershaw in the WC overall, so he has more to worry about than just catching Petter Northug. In particular, Marcus Hellner is only 57 points back, while Alexander Legkov is fully 168 points back. Hellner is obviously the more immediate concern, [...] Related posts:
Recall that at the start of the season, I considered this question with a bit of skepticism. I was definitely more skeptical about her prospects than some others. Hopeful, but skeptical. My skepticism stemmed from the fact that while Kikkan is arguably the best freestyle sprinter in the world right now, her classic skiing has traditionally lagged a [...] Related posts:
That was the question in a comment I got the other day. So here’s the situation. Devon Kershaw currently has 953 WC points, Petter Northug has 1199. Northug is apparently going to skip the next two weekends of WC racing in order to prepare for the Vasaloppet. Could Kershaw catch and overtake Northug in that [...] Related posts:
A couple quick notes about some sprinting results. Devon Kershaw Kershaw’s having a heck of a season. On of the things I’m been most impressed with is how much his sprinting has improved, which is something I feel like hasn’t been mentioned much in a lot of the coverage: The circled result in the most [...] Related posts:
Two topics today. Rybinsk Field Strength I’m including the Moscow sprints here, but generally these races are notorious for low attendance. They require some of the most travel for many of the Europeans and they are often scheduled very near the Scandinavian nation’s national championships. Did this year’s races attract a stronger or weaker field [...] Related posts: