It’s always fun when the World Cup takes a turn through North America, although I’m a cranky old traditionalist, so sprints aren’t my favorite event, and city sprints are even further down the list for me. One challenge that comes up in trying to assess performance in WCs held in North America is that the […]
Tagged Analysis, canada, city sprint, men, Sprint, USA, women, World CupI noted in a Tweet that Marit Bjoergen is the only skier since 1992 to win each of the four opening World Cup events (sprint and distance) in a row. But if you relax that condition to allow for streaks occurring at any point in the season (and include Olympic and World Championship events), Bjoergen […]
Tagged Distance, marit bjoergen, men, Sprint, winning streak, women, World CupNothing earth shattering about saying, but the US women have clearly made some significant strides in their distance skiing over the past 2-3 seasons. Let’s visualize this first comparing Kikkan Randall to the other US women: Pretty dramatic all around. For some context, let’s plot the same data (but without all the fancy shading) along […]
Tagged Distance, men, USA, women, World CupListening to the FasterSkier podcast today, Topher and Nat discussed the notion that the Canadian men frequently seem to struggle early in the season. If we’re talking about how “the Canadian men” perform on the WC level, let’s focus on Kershaw, Harvey and Babikov, since they’ve been the “regulars” on the WC circuit for the […]
Tagged Analysis, canadan, Distance, early season, men, Sprint, trend, World CupContinuing on with some notes about the World Cup opener in Gällivare last weekend. It’s always the case in a season opener that much will be made of a handful of people who had unexpectedly good or bad races. Usually, this is an overreaction. But let’s play that game anyway and look at two skiers […]
Tagged andrew musgrave, canada, field depth, gallivare, justyna kowalczyk, USA, women, World CupNot much to say, really, about the US women this past weekend. The relays aren’t really something I tackle from a data perspective, so I’ll just focus on the distance results form Saturday. It was a strong day, that sounds like it could have been stronger for the US women, absent some falls. I went […]
Tagged canada, Distance, gallivare, men, US, women, World CupOne of the more exciting stories out of the early season FIS races in Muonio, Finland was the strong performances from Liz Stephen. Now, being a cautious, data centric guy, I also tend to be a bit of a downer. So I am loathe to predict much based on a single race, although there have […]
Tagged early season, justyna kowalczyk, liz stephen, muonio