I’m really sad that Vincent Vittoz retired, mainly because I really, really wanted him to win an Olympic medal. The French men are left with two guys who are pretty well established: These graphs show only their major international results (WC, WSC, etc.). Manificat’s stupendous win in 2010 is looking more and more like an […]
Tagged development, Distance, France, menA commenter noted a few other classic specialists in my post on Erling Jevne the other day. So how did they fare against Jevne? It’s generally important to note here that my data stops in 1992, and several of these folks were active before then. In Kirvesniemi’s case, way before. Jevne and Sture Sirvetsen were probably […]
Tagged classic, erling jevne, harri kirvesniemi, markus gandler, men, specialists, sture sirvetsenErling Jevne wasn’t the best skier during his era, having to compete with folks like Dæhlie and Smirnov among others. And he wasn’t even the best classic skier, most likely. At least, he was still mostly losing to those two guys even in classic races: Jevne fared better post-1997, but Dæhlie always had at least […]
Tagged bjoern daehlie, erling jevne, vladimir smirnovWith the recent news that Andrus Veerpalu’s doping suspension has been made official, a sad story sort of ends. I’m always glad to see doping rules enforced, but it’s also not the way I want to hear about my favorite sport in the news. Over the years, Veerpalu has raced against many people: Name Number […]
Tagged andrus veerpalu, dopingAs promised from last time, a quick look at some similar data broken down by race length. I’ve filtered out the occasional “strange” race length, to focus on just the standard 5, 10, 15, 30 and 50 kilometer distances. The metric is the same: the median number of skiers within a fixed percent of the […]
Tagged competitiveness, Distance, field strength, World CupI received an email recently asking about field strength for the men’s and women’s WC fields, particularly as it applies to mass start races. Lately we’ve seen the men’s field engage in a fair bit of pack skiing, whereas the women’s field strings out more quickly. First, I want to dispatch with a common bit […]
Tagged charlotte kalla, competitiveness, field strength, justyna kowalczyk, marit bjoergen, men vs women, therese johaug, World CupOn various occasions I have looked at FIS point race penalties, in a very general, roundabout way.  Most recently, I looked at whether the FIS points you get in a non-World Cup race accurately reflect what you would have scored if you had raced in a World Cup race. The answer appeared to be: kind of.  At […]
Tagged fis points, penalty, prediction, World Cup