Heat Times I’ve been otherwise occupied, so I didn’t follow the racing action too closely this weekend. But for you own edification, here are how the heat time shook out among the men’s finalists: Some of the outlying times were cut off, obviously. Note the general increase in speed in the quarters, and then folks [...] Related posts:
Housekeeping note: Posting may be a tad delayed and/or sporadic this weekend and into the beginning of next week since the Statistical Family has increased in size by 50%. I’ve engaged in a bit of speculation about the likelihood that Kikkan Randall may be able to win the WC Sprint overall title this coming season. [...] Related posts:
Norwegian Women An esteemed reported asked me to report back on whether the Norwegian women’s dominant display so far this season is unprecedented. There are numerous different directions one could take that question, mainly having to do with how you choose to measure their dominance. But we’ve got to pick something, so let’s measure the [...] Related posts:
North Americans Each weekend seems to be an interesting mix of results for the North Americans. Starting with the women (Davos result circled in blue): Compared to this season, that was an off day for Kikkan, but compared to last season that was pretty typical. Part of me wonders if she dialed it back a [...] Related posts:
Christian Hoffmann Christopher Tassava chimed in with another request, regarding the news this week about Christian Hoffman’s 6 year suspension. Since I did post looking at who stood to gain if you removed Andrus Veerpalu from past results, he wanted to know what it would look like if we did the same thing with Christian [...] Related posts:
Men’s Biathlon The US men’s biathlon team had an auspicious start to the season. Lowell Bailey in particular skied some of the best races of his life. Let’s focus on the following three North Americans (click for larger version): Obviously, the shooting statistics for this season are based on only this past weekend’s racing, so [...] Related posts:
Sprint Recap Thanks again to Jan over at WorldOfXC.com (and FIS’s ability to not wreck them, although they tried!) we have the sprint heat times from Saturday. Starting with the women’s semifinals: Semifinal 1 was markedly faster, no? It doesn’t appear that Kikkan suffered for it, but then the Düsseldorf course is unusually short for [...] Related posts:
Podcast Shenanigans So I tune into the FasterSkier podcast tonight during my run, only to hear that I’m apparently the lead topic, by way of Kikkan Randall’s strong classic sprint (and distance) results in Kuusamo. Fair enough. As fun as it would be to turn this into a full on blog war, I actually think [...] Related posts:
A decidedly mixed weekend for the North Americans, something we’re used to by now I suppose. I suppose that Kikkan Randall and Alex Harvey were the main bright spots, as well as Len Valjas’s excellent sprint race. Let’s start with some of the American women: Kikkan really has started quite strong in distance races. Many [...] Related posts:
Annsi Pentsinen Doogiski over at NordicXplained asked how Pentsinen’s 4.3 second win in qualification on Friday stacks up historically. Quite impressively, it turns out. That’s the second largest qualifying round winning margin for the men’s field in WC, OWG or WSC races. The only larger one was almost 10 years ago, with a 4.7 second [...] Related posts:
Missed Medals A reader asked on Twitter the other day if I’d recalculate the tallies for Kris Freeman’s top ten, top three, etc. results if we went back and removed a certain Estonian skier from prior results sheets. I’m going to preface this with some standard caveats about how I can’t know for sure when [...] Related posts:
Finally, the World Cup season is under way. The individual 10/15km freestyle races this past weekend had some predictable performances (the Norwegian women) and some not so predictable performances (Swedish men). Men Let’s focus on just three of the men with notable performances on Saturday: Definitely strong races for each of these guys, but there [...] Related posts:
I’ll have a post up on Wednesday with some items from this weekends World Cup races. But I’ve been busy over the off-season and the site has seen some fairly major changes, so I need to take a second to describe what’s new. First, some general housekeeping. Regular readers may notice that I’m going to [...] Related posts:
A quick look at our lovely neighbors to the north! I’m going to focus on the folks on the World Cup squad, starting with the men: These are the WC level distance results (excluding Len Valjas). I confess I’m a little worried about Ivan Babikov, who had a rough season last year. His trend over [...] Related posts:
Another season is just around the corner! While the USST saw some changes over the off season, the folks we are most likely to see top results from are still the Big Three: Kikkan Randall, Andy Newell and Kris Freeman. My expectations and questions for Freeman are summed up in this graph: This shows his [...] Related posts:
Another season is just around the corner! While the USST saw some changes over the off season, the folks we are most likely to see top results from are still the Big Three: Kikkan Randall, Andy Newell and Kris Freeman. My expectations and questions for Freeman are summed up in this graph: This shows his [...] Related posts:
A regular reader asked me over the weekend to comment on Devon Kershaw’s less than stellar opening race of the season. Specifically, he asked: Kershaw seems like he’s one of the most volatile skiers on the WC circuit. Is this true? The question of how consistent (or not) various skiers are comes up fairly regularly. [...] Related posts:
A regular reader asked me over the weekend to comment on Devon Kershaw’s less than stellar opening race of the season. Specifically, he asked: Kershaw seems like he’s one of the most volatile skiers on the WC circuit. Is this true? The question of how consistent (or not) various skiers are comes up fairly regularly. [...] Related posts:
A regular reader asked me over the weekend to comment on Devon Kershaw’s less than stellar opening race of the season. Specifically, he asked: Kershaw seems like he’s one of the most volatile skiers on the WC circuit. Is this true? The question of how consistent (or not) various skiers are comes up fairly regularly. [...] Related posts:
A regular reader asked me over the weekend to comment on Devon Kershaw’s less than stellar opening race of the season. Specifically, he asked: Kershaw seems like he’s one of the most volatile skiers on the WC circuit. Is this true? The question of how consistent (or not) various skiers are comes up fairly regularly. [...] Related posts: