Unfortunately, we have a distinct theme for this week’s posts. Jenny Olsson also passed away recently, apparently from breast cancer. She raced, quite successfully, for Sweden for much of the mid-00’s: These are just her WC level distance results (she didn’t sprint much). As you can see, 2002-2003 was her best effort, but […]
Tagged jenny olsson, sweden, women, World CupIn some very sad news, we learned recently that Inge Braten passed away rather suddenly. It is difficult (and probably slightly foolish) to try to quantify a coach’s impact on skiing results, so let’s consider this post a rememberance, rather than an analysis. Perhaps most famously, Braten coached the Norwegian men during their “Golden Era”: (My […]
Tagged canada, coaches, inge braten, men, norway, sweden, World CupLast in the series of most improved/unimproved we finally turn to the women’s sprinters: Alena Prochazkova took a major tumble this season in sprints. She had been a fairly reliable presence in the semifinals until this season, when she appeared to often have trouble qualifying. Celine Brun-Lie also saw a major drop-off, but the much […]
Tagged most unimproved, season recap, Sprint, women, World CupAlmost done with the series now, just the sprinters who struggled the most this season, starting with the men: This list is notable for a few reasons, first because of the large number of big names on it. Usually there are at least of few people my metrics pick out that I don’t really know, […]
Tagged men, most unimproved, season recap, Sprint, World CupMoving right along to the most improved women’s sprinter (at least, according to the metric laid out in this post). Here’s the collection: As usual, you can click on it for a slightly larger version. Once again, I think we’re seeing that North America had a pretty across the board incredible year in sprinting, with […]
Tagged most improved, season recap, Sprint, women, World CupNow we’ll finish up this series with the sprinters, starting with the most improved men. The methodology is simpler here, as we really only need to use finishing place as a metric (although we will still scale improvements so that, say, improving from 40th to 20th isn’t seen as a dramatically larger improvement than from […]
Tagged men, most improved, season recap, Sprint, World CupI got an interesting question from a reader the other day that I though I’d follow up on: As you know, the winners of all the continental cups gets to start the World Cup season. There are also intermediate rankings during the season that allows the current continental cup leaders to join the WC’s. My […]
Tagged Analysis, continental cup, World Cup