Last time I looked at some split timing data for Americans in World Cup races. Let’s do the same with our neighbors to the north:
A lot more skiers here with only 1-2 races, so I’ll focus on the “full time” racers. Recall that I’ve done lots of scaling in order to sensibly compare values between races. The x axis is scaled to be proportional to the distance through a particular race, which adjusts for differences in race lengths. The y axis represents the relative percent behind the leaders for that skier in that particular race. That means you can’t compare the absolute levels between skiers; only the differences in trends are relevant between panels.
The “big three” of Harvey, Kershaw and Babikov all show a similar pattern, particularly in mass start and pursuit races. Generally speaking they tend to move up during the course of these kinds of races. If you look closely, you’ll see that Babikov displays a similar trend even in his interval start races, finishing closer to the leaders than when he started. Harvey was more likely to fade somewhat in interval start races (although I only have split times for two such races for him).
Chandra Crawford shows a clear downward trend in interval start races, while Daria Gaiazova’s races are more of a mixed bag. One interesting race is Brooke Gosling’s single pursuit (at least, the only one I have split times for), I believe the WSC pursuit. That first early split was very early, so it’s overstating how quickly she started, perhaps. But then she has some difficulty midway through the race before recovering somewhat toward the end. It being a pursuit, I wonder if she had problems in the transition.
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