Statistical Skier

Last week I looked at the distance race results of some skiers who had been caught using performance enhancing drugs.  A commenter wondered if I could show some data for “suspected dopers” as well. Honestly, I was a bit reluctant to do that.  I mean, as much as I hate doping, the negative consequences of […]

Previously, I described some problems with using percent back (PB) as a basis for comparing race performances.  Namely, mass start and interval start races produce very different types of PB’s.  In this post we’ll briefly consider whether this problem is actually worth worrying about and then I’ll finish with a simple solution.

Nat Herz wrote an interesting article today on FasterSkier.com about different ski companies’ policies regarding sponsoring athletes who’ve been caught doping in the past.  I thought this post might make an interesting companion to Nat’s article. This post is going to look at race results data for skiers who’ve been caught doping.  I need to […]

A far less cheery topic than skier improvement is, well, the opposite.  Lacking a better term, I’m sticking with “unimproved”.  That’s not technically accurate, since I’m actually looking at skiers who went considerably slower year to year.  But I feel bad enough pointing out trends like these, no need to add gratuitously insulting terminology to […]