Statistical Skier

This annual rollerski race was this past weekend, and as usual attracted a fair number of good domestic skiers. With the US Ski Team attending, it’s a good chance for folks to test themselves against folks like Kris Freeman. As with any other race, it’s natural to ask what the results “mean”. There are no concrete answers to that kind of question, but we can provide some context. For example, since Kris Freeman is essentially the benchmark for US distance racers unable to get to Europe that often, we can look at how people’s performance against him would compare in a WC race.

All of this is highly approximate, of course.

I’ve taken Freeman’s races from last season, removed some of the least comparable (prologue’s for example), and then calculated where in each of these WC races folks would have placed if they finished the same percent behind Freeman as they did in Climb to the Castle. Blank entries in the table indicate that that person’s percent back places them after the last WC skiers in that race.

If you’re wondering about the runs of identical places in the columns, the reason is that there are often some large time gaps at the very back of the field, so there are a wide range of percent backs that might fit between second to last and last, for instance.