When most people say that World Cup skiers are animals, they probably mean they are fierce, strong competitors. Â I got my PhD in statistics in a department that found itself working quite often with very strong wildlife biology and ecology departments, so for me that reference leads me to think, “Well, what if they really […]
Tagged Analysis, Distance, R, survival, technical, World CupThe connection is pretty obvious, actually. Â Both are mass start races that involve switching activities at least once during the race. Â The change in activities is certainly more extreme in triathlon, but you get my drift. Some people (like, say, me) complain on occasion that pursuit races in cross-country skiing place too great an emphasis […]
Tagged mass start, pursuits, R, triathlonWith more North Americans sojourning over to Europe to participate in high-level European racing that isn’t quite World Cups, I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at the OPA (or Alpen) Cup and Scandinavian Cup series in a bit more detail. As the name might imply, the Scandinavian Cup races are […]
Tagged competitiveness, opa cup, race penalty, scandinavian cup, supertourMy real job started up again this week, so there aren’t going to be very many 5-6 post’s per week happening for a while… On Monday I shared some summary statistics on a whole bunch of skiers showing how often they finishing in the top 3, top 5, etc. over their entire careers. The Vuelta […]
Tagged week in reviewGerman biathlete Kati Wilhelm (sporting some delightful red hair, I might add) is the last (finally!) in my list of retiring athletes to cover. Â That Wikipedia link tells me that she was actually dubbed “Little Red Riding Hood” by the German press due to both her hair and a red hat she wore for all […]
Tagged biathlon, kati wilhelm, retirement, retrospectiveCurious what people have been talking about in the comments section on FasterSkier.com lately ?  Maybe you are, but too scared to look?  I’ve got a solution for you. Or maybe you’re one of those people who would rather anonymously mock anonymous FasterSkier commenters, in which case this might make your mockery more time efficient, which […]
Tagged comments, fasterskier, word cloudThere are two somewhat different ways in which you could be considered a skating or classic specialist. Â First, you can be noticeably better at one technique than the other. Â Second, you could just only do races of one technique or the other. These two situations might overlap, or they might not. Â In any case, they […]
Tagged Distance, specialization, technique