Statistical Skier

So, our Inn’s Internet is giving me nothing but 105 Errors, and there doesn’t seem to be much anyone can do about it. Hence, I’m reduced to alerting you of this using my phone via 3G. (Definitely regretting not jailbreaking my phone right now.)

On the other hand, the Statistical Wife and I are pleasantly tired from our race, hanging out on the stunningly scenic Orcas Island and both the cable and Internet are down and we have a fireplace. It took some hard bargaining with the Statistical Wife for her to let me stare at my phone this long as it is. So I’m going to take cue from her and call this lack of connectivity a good thing.

Statistical Skier out.

Strong race for Sara Studebaker today and some good races from Lowell Bailey and Jay Hakkinen as well.

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I don’t mean any disrespect by the title, there, it’s just that the Rybinsk World Cups haven’t been very well attended. I was told by a friend recently that the Canadians included as part of their WSC selection criteria the standard of “finishing in the top 20 and the top half of a World Cup event”. The number of WC individual events where you could potentially be in the top twenty but also in the bottom half of the results is a fairly short list.

Rybinsk, obviously. The China World Cups from several years ago are another option, as are some of the later Tour de Ski stages. Some of the WCs held in the US or Canada might have had some very small fields as well on occasion.

I’ve heard that travelling there is inconvenient for various reasons, and I think they might also just be located in a tough part of the winter schedule, falling very near many nation’s national championships. Who knows. What I can do is to show you just how poorly attended the Rybinsk events have been:

This shows the minimum, median and maximum number of racers (who finished) in any single race in the given country over the past 4 seasons or so (which is about how long they’ve been doing the Rybinsk WCs). For the most part, the men’s fields tend to be in the 60-70 range while the women’s fields tend to be in the 50-60 range.

The Russian WCs do stand out (along with the smaller number of China WCs) as often having very small fields. They have, on occasion dropped down below 30 in distance events. The median field size for the men’s distance race in Russia doesn’t seem dramatically lower than several others, but it still is lower.

Another way we can look at this is by counting the number of nations that are represented in a given event: Continue reading ›