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- Giro d’Italia: After Stage 10 4 views
- Encouraging Signs From Liz Stephen 2 views
- Predicting World Cup FIS Points (con’t) 1 view
- Most Unimproved Men: Distance 1 view
- Unusual WC Sprint Qualifying Time Gaps 1 view
- The USA-CAN Men’s Relay Rivalry Has A Very Long History 1 view
- New Statistical Skier Features 1 view
- The Hot Hand 1 view
- WSC Pursuit Recap 1 view
- Even Bigger Winner Margins! 1 view
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U23 Recap: Finland & Sweden
A few more U23 historical performance plots, this time two European nations that happen to have some noticeable trends. First, Finland:
The women have seen a drop off in distance results post-Lahteenmaki, but the men’s have declined steadily for quite some time now. The other nation we’re going to look at is Sweden:
I mostly noticed the men’s distance results again, but the men’s sprint results have tailed off somewhat as well.
Tagged Analysis, U23U23 Recap: North America
I was recapping  WJC results last week by comparing them to each nation’s historical performance. Let’s do the same thing this week, but with U23s. Starting with the Americans:
The trend isn’t spectacular, but each group managed at least one or two decent results (compared to previous years). As for the Canadians:
The men’s distance panel is a tad unfair, since the Canadian men really did have one year of an usually strong group of Alex Harvey, Len Valja, Frederic Touchette and Brent McMurtry.
Tagged canada, U23, USAWJC Update
With a couple of races at WJC/U23s under our belts, let’s check in with how some nations are doing compared to previous years.
Some obvious trends include Finland:
Their junior women have continued to do worse in the distance events, but have improved in the sprint. For the Russians, it’s largely been more of the same, which is a good thing (for them): Continue reading ›
Tagged Analysis, junior, WJCImproved Women
Several women have pretty dramatically improved their distance skiing this season, and I’m particularly excited that some of them are Finns. This isn’t an exhaustive list, just the ones that I’ve noticed so far:
Kylloenen is an interesting case, since she’s clearly made a jump, but her results have still been noticeably variable, perhaps even more so than last season. Niskanen has also made a jump, though it isn’t quite as dramatic looking. Sometimes those smaller, steady improvements from year to year are easier to sustain though. Emma Wiken hasn’t just made a significant jump, but she’s also clearly getting more starts this year, which probably helps.
And of course, there’s Liz Stephen, who actually only had a so-so season last year (at least, on average) but clearly has rebounded.
Tagged improved, women, World CupRace Snapshot: La Clusaz 10/15k Classic Mass Start
You can read a short description of these graphs here.
The men’s race:
And the women’s race:
WJC Preview
World Junior Championships are just around the corner, so for some perspective, let’s take a look at how various nations have done at this even historically. I’m not going to provide much commentary, just show each nation’s history.
First up the US:
Not ideal trends, I think, across the board. But junior championships can be fickle, particularly with kids (relatively) unused to travel to Europe. As for Canada:
Some definite improvement for the women’s distance event, to be sure.
Now let’s look at some of the more traditionally strong nations, starting with Norway: Continue reading ›
Tagged junior, preview, WJC