Ok, so I lied in the title. This post has almost nothing to do with Torin Koos. The whole reason I started this blog (or, at least, one of them) was that it seemed to me that folks in the XC skiing world had all sorts of weird beliefs about their sport that ought to […]
Tagged Analysis, fact checking, heats, qualification, SprintThe weekend after the Tour finishes will have smaller fields, and this was no different. Still, The Americans will take the results regardless of who else shows up. Here’s how the women’s finalists progressed during the day: Flat courses will tend to produce times like this, where the qualification round is quite fast, and then […]
Tagged city sprint, freestyle, men, race recap, Sprint, women, World CupYou’ll recall that recently this rivalry has been fairly one sided, no matter how much Justyna’s fans want to believe otherwise. The previous two season simply saw Marit winning far more of their head to head match-ups. At the start of the season, things looked even worse for the Justyna camp, as she struggled quite […]
Tagged Distance, head to head, justyna kowalczyk, marit bjoergen, SprintAs with most stage races these days, the Tour de Ski included some handicap start pursuits. Generally, the athletes will start in a staggered fashion based upon their time back in the overall standings, and the first person to the finish line wins the stage. This creates some very unusual incentives for the athletes, depending […]
Tagged handicap, kris freeman, liz stephen, pursuit, tour de ski, World CupI didn’t do nearly as much writing about the Tour as I would have liked, but here are some graphs summarizing the way things shook out. Men Here’s a bird’s eye view of the men’s Tour, measured using seconds behind the median skier: These sorts of bump charts are nice, as they can allow you […]
Tagged bump chart, recap, tour de ski, World CupOnce again, a bit after the fact…the heat times analysis for the freestyle sprint the other day. Men Starting with the finals: That was decidedly slow, tactical final. Interesting that David Hofer had such fast times in the quarters and semis. Semifinal 2 was slightly faster, but not by a ton. Women As for the […]
Tagged bump chart, men, Sprint, tour de ski, women, World CupThere’s just too much racing going on during the first half of January to comment on it all. But the first rest day of the Tour de Ski certainly deserves some notes. So here’s a look at the current leaders of the Tour, compared to how they’ve fared in previous years, starting with the men: […]
Tagged bump chart, rest day, tour de ski, World Cup