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Race Snapshots: TdS Freestyle Sprint

For some reason, this song has been running through my head all morning.  I wonder why?  Too bad Randall got tangled up in the final, though.

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2011 01 05 Joran Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Tour de Ski: Leaders & North Americans

Once again, not much commentary here, just some graphs showing some notable individuals progress through the tour.  I haven’t highlighted all the leaders, per se, just some of the top people and some other interesting ones.

No one’s likely to touch Kowalczyk for the overall, although there’s a lot of racing left to be done.  But the race for second and third is definitely going to be interesting for the women.

As for the North Americans:

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2011 01 04 Joran Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Tour de Ski: Comparison To 2010

An excellent suggestion from the comments was to redo the graphs by nation, but overlay them on top of the same data from last year’s Tour for comparison.

Easily done!  I’ve pruned back the nations plotted even further to focus more heavily on the big guns, and it also enhances readability.  Also, keep in mind that the races from the equivalent stages from last year’s Tour were not all the same format as this year, I believe (Stage 4 was the second sprint last year).  As before, click through for full versions:

Tour de Ski men 2010 vs 2011 through Stage 4.

Tour de Ski women 2010 vs 2011 through Stage 4.

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2011 01 04 Joran Uncategorized Comments (1) Permalink

Tour de Ski Rest Day Recap

I’m not going to provide much analysis here, just the graphs.  Feel free to pontificate in the comments.  First up is the overall Tour rank after each stage:

The two day pursuit created more chaos in the overall placings than I expected.  Somewhat more significant movement in the sprint in Stage 3 with the men, given the pure sprint specialists there.

The following two graphs split the men’s and women’s fields by nation (except for Andorra and Australia, for space reasons; sorry!).  Instead of rank, they display the seconds from the median skier after each stage.  They are somewhat large, so click through for the full versions: Continue reading ›

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2011 01 04 Joran Uncategorized Comments (3) Permalink

TdS Classic Sprint: North Americans

Just a few short notes focusing on the North Americans in the classic sprint yesterday.  First the men:

One thing that stands out to me is that Harvey was actually skiing slightly faster than Kershaw all day.  Of course, the differences are very small (~1 second), but it highlights how large an impact the make-up of your quarterfinal and semifinal can have on your result.

The corresponding women’s graph is obviously pretty boring: Continue reading ›

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2011 01 03 Joran Uncategorized Comments (1) Permalink

Race Snapshot: TdS Continuous Pursuit

If you’ve ever wondered why I haven’t attempted more statistical machinations to predict race results, today’s races are an example of why I haven’t.  Actually, I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to build some models that will predict performance, but what I’ve learned is that skiers are too variable for reasonably simple models to make interesting predictions.  For instance, no one wil care much if I claim to be able to predict a skier’s finishing place in a WC to within 15 places; a prediction of 15th just means I’d be certain they’re going to finish in the top thirty.

Anyhow, with today’s mass start pursuit race, the points are once again unusually low, so I’ve adjusted them for a somewhat clearer picture of how today’s race compares to each athlete’s past.  Once again, I’m using the method outlined here and here.  So keep in mind that the actual race points I’m plotting here are generally inflated compared to what you’ll find in the official results.  But all of the points I’ve used have been adjusted, so the comparisons within each athlete are reasonably fair.

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2011 01 03 Joran Uncategorized Comments (2) Permalink

TdS Classic Sprint Recap

Once again thanks to my data connection over at WorldofXC.com for the sprint splits data.  The overall picture for the women’s race is about what you’d expect:

Petra Majdic basically crushed everyone in sight, and in fact the closest anyone really came to her was in qualification.  After a rough start to her season, this is pretty eye-opening.  The question now is which Petra Majdic is the “outlier”?  Was she skiing unusually poorly up to this point and this effort is more “normal”?  Or is it the reverse?  Is her form actually off this year and this particular race was just a day where she felt unusually good (or perhaps some others felt unusually bad)?

I wish I had watched this one (and perhaps I’ll go track down some video), since from the descriptions I’ve read Kowalczyk’s descending “skills” were prominently displayed on this course.  If Kowalczyk could ski downhill reasonably well, would Majdic have skied away with this one so easily?

Here’s a look at the difference between the two semifinals:

Semifinal two was generally faster, if we ignore Majdic.  The semifinal two skier way off the back was Anna Haag, who’s not particularly known for her sprinting.

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2011 01 03 Joran Uncategorized Comments (1) Permalink