I see on FasterSkier the news that there is already some angst regarding the FIS World Cup race calendar for next season.
I have two things say on this topic that takes the form of two graphs…
FIS cross country races:
IBU biathlon races:
A couple of notes:
- Size of the dot is proportional to the proportion of that type of race that season
- These are men’s races only; I’m not being sexist, I’m just saving time cause the women’s graphs would be exactly the same but the distances would be different.
- Keep in mind that the XC non-pursuit non-team races are all further split into classic and freestyle; biathlon does only freestyle.
- In XC, the stage races include a sort of smorgasboard of races from all the other types of individual races: sprints, interval starts, pursuits, mass starts and other “weird” races like 9km uphill races. Â So if you wanted, you could make the XC graph look even messier.
- Stage races are complete units.  You can’t just pick one of the stages and do only that.  You  have to do them all.
- I also have glossed over the various format changes that happened in XC sprint racing over the years.
- I could be oversimplifying the biathlon race formats, but I don’t think so. Â (Well, I know that I omitted the mixed relays, but that’s it I think.)
I’m sure I’ve miscounted something somewhere here, but I think my point is still clear.
If there’s an editorial comment I mean to make, it’s simply that if FIS thinks that cycling-ish stage racing is where we’re headed, they should man up and just switch over completely. Â Enough tinkering. Â It’s time for XC skiing to choose an identity and then be that.
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