Biathlon World Cup action started up again today (well, the individual races anyway; there were relays the last two days). Â The results look a bit topsy-turvy, with a fair number of big names having a tough day at the office. Â Looks like several of the North Americans had some issues in the range.
Tagged biathlon, men, race snapshot, Sprint, World CupLike last time a look at the performance of skiers from different nations in this year’s TdS and last year’s. Â As always, click through for full versions, as these are somewhat large:
Again, apologies if your favorite country isn’t shown.
The Russian men actually seem to be doing about the same, with a handful of skiers doing well early (sprinters, mostly) only to drop out, leaving a few mid-pack skiers. Â The main difference for Norway is Northug being somewhat off his game; the rest of the Norwegian men are roughly where they were last year. Â The German team’s struggles are clear, although mostly that’s been manifested by them dropping out rather than continuing and skiing really slowly.
The addition of Kalla and Haag, Swedish women are having a much, much stronger Tour this year. Â The Russian women are almost a complete disaster, although I’m less familiar with their various skiers, so I’m not sure how to judge differences in who they decided to send to the Tour. If it weren’t for Krista Lahteenmaki, the Finnish women would also look like a complete disaster. Â It’s also interesting to compare Kowalczyk’s progress this year to last. Â With the obvious caveat that the stage formats weren’t exactly the same last year, she continued to pile on time relative to the median skier past Stage 4 last year. Â This year she’s basically flatlined.
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Tagged bump chart, men, recap, tour de ski, womenAs expected, Stage 6 saw quite a bit of movement (as well as skiers abandoning due to illness):
A couple of the men are really quite a ways off the back; I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some of them pack it in. Â Stage 6 created a lot more “clumpiness” with the men, although the women have some groups formed as well.
Kowalczyk has been losing ground on the main chase group since Stage 4 and is now in danger of yielding the overall lead if she doesn’t stem the tide. Â Cologna on the other hand looks to have this race more or less under control. Â Kershaw finally returned to planet Earth today and fell from second overall as he was swallowed up by the main chase group.
Here’s the breakdown by nation (with some countries omitted): Continue reading ›
Tagged bump chart, Distance, men, stage, tour de ski, women, World CupI’ve opted not to adjust the points on these, despite their being a a bit abnormal. Â I think the performance comparisons are clear enough without making any alterations. Â But, as you can see, there was definitely some concerted skiing in groups today.
Tagged freestyle, handicap, pursuit, race snapshot, tour de ski, World CupThose Finns are Matti Heikkinen and Krista Lahteenmaki, of course, and I’m mostly referring to distance races:
I actually made this graph prior to today’s race, so keep that in mind.
Simply using finishing rank for each athlete paints an interesting picture. Â The first thing I want to note is that Heikkinen’s results this year so far are quite consistent with someone skiing into form as the season progresses, although it’s hard to tell from the compressed time scale in this graph. Â So far this season he’s finished 82nd, 41st, 12th, 35th, 11th, 7th and 1st, in that order.
I suppose a naysayer might point out that the latter bit of Heikkinen’s improvement may well be due to the changing tactics that take place during the Tour de Ski, as top skiers (a) become fatigued and (b) focus on maintaining their overall standing rather than trying to win each individual stage.
Or maybe Heikkinen was just planning on focusing on the Tour all along, so he’s just peaking for this event.
In a larger sense, I’m intrigued by what happened to Heikkinen between 2008 and 2009.
Lahteenmaki is young and simply on fire. Â With each passing race it seems less likely that this is just a fluke, and more likely that she’s someone to watch out for over the next several years.
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Tagged Distance, finland, krista lahtee, matti heikkinenIt was a banner day for North America, to be sure. Â Let’s take a look at how the heats played out, starting with the semifinalists:
Tour de Ski men's freestyle sprint semifinalists.
Tour de Ski women's freestyle sprint semifinalists.
I’ve removed Roger Aa Djupvik from the men’s plot, as he ran into a spot of difficulty in the quarters and packed it in for a very slow time. Â It’ll have to wait until the end of the season, after I’ve accumulated more of these sprint results, but I’m beginning to get the sense that there’s a real difference between the men/women in how the speeds of each round plays out. Â My general sense is that the men’s heats are more likely to slow down as the day goes on, but that’s just based on my gut sense from looking at a bunch of these. Â I’ll do something more formal later on.
There’s a clear difference in speed between the two semifinals for the men, less so for the women. Â However, keep in mind the scale here, where differences that look large visually may be as small as 0.5-1.5 seconds.
Focusing in on the finalists themselves:
Tagged devon kershaw, freestyle, kikkan randall, recap, Sprint, tour de skiI’m squeaking this in just as the biathlon circuit gets going again. Â This will be a really quick post just recapping how the US has done on the WC circuit so far this season. Â I’m not even going to cover everyone that’s had a WC start, just the “major players” so far.
First up a look at the women, using percent back from the median skier:
Laura Spector hasn’t been terribly consistent, but she’s been quite a bit faster than last season on a few occasions. Â Sara Studebaker has only been slightly more consistent, but has one more solid race under her belt so far this season. Â They are both still struggling to break through the median skier barrier, but they’re both fairly young and seeing at least some results that are an improvement on last season.
Things are a little less rosy for the men so far: Continue reading ›
Tagged biathlon, jeremy teela, laura spector, leif nordgren, lowell bailey, midseason, review, sara studebaker, tim burke, USA, World Cup
