Statistical Skier

Great day for North America, overall.  Fantastic races by Kershaw and Harvey and strong efforts by Freeman and Randall (for a classic sprint, not her specialty, certainly not Freeman’s).  Newell probably isn’t thrilled with his 12th place, given how much stumbling around it sounded like he did during the semis, but it’s not a terrible result for him.

On the international side, the men’s semis were dominated (in numbers, if not the results) by the Russians and Swedes.  Norway can’t be thrilled with that.  As usual, more diverse on the women’s side, with Majdic finally shaking off whatever was holding her back earlier in the season.  Also, Krista Lahteenmaki is quickly becoming an interesting skier to watch.  Will this be a one season hot streak, or will she be a superstar in a few years?

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Happy (Almost) New Year!  And thanks once again to Skadi Nordic for sponsoring this week in review.  As the Tour de Ski get’s rolling, here’s what we’ve been up to this week:

• We looked a bit more closely at the link between qualifying in the top ten and going on to do well in the finals in sprint racing.
• Upon a reader’s request, I followed up my earlier technique preference post for Japan by examining the Italians with some interesting results, I thought.  A similar post for Norway is in the pipeline.
• Before the second bout of World Cup action got under way I snuck in some mid-season recaps for the North American skiers, both sprint and distance.
• As a short preview for the Tour de Ski I made some bump charts for last year’s Tour, just to see how things played out last year.
• I revisited a post from a while back looking at the “struggles” of the Norwegian men’s distance skiers (which, as an American, I’m required to place in quotations; I understand that they’re struggling compared to what they are used to), updating it to include the results so far this season.
• Finally, since the Tour de Ski officially kicked off today, we had a race snapshot post for the prologue, despite the difficulties of comparing the prologue to other races.

I had planned to post something looking at the North American domestic scene, but some of the last races in December were slow to appear on the FIS site, and then it was Christmas and now US Nationals are right around the corner.  So I have some stuff thought out on that subject, but at this point it probably makes more sense to wait until after US Nationals and assess where we are then.

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Back in September I wrote a post looking at the supposed woes of Norway’s male distance team.  The bottom line was that, yes, by various measures things haven’t been looking as good lately for the Norwegian men’s distance squad.  With the first period of racing completed, and more rumblings in Norway about their poor performance, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit and update my previous post.

As before, I’m going to avoid fancier metrics like FIS points and stuff.  So here’s an updated graph showing the number of athletes Norway, Sweden and Russia have placed in various groups, per race, over time:

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Continuing on from my last post on North American distance skiers, let’s jump right in with the sprinters, starting with the men:

No fancy metrics here, just what place people finished in.  Once again, red is this season, blue is last year’s Olympics.  Alex Harvey’s sprint race in Kuusamo was unusually good for him.  Simi Hamilton had one excellent race and two pretty bad ones, although he’s been struggling with a leg injury for a while.  Stefan Kuhn hasn’t really put one together yet, but his two results around 30th aren’t exactly atypical for him so far in his career.  Kershaw had a strong sprint result in Kuusamo and then an unusually bad one.

Len Valjas certainly had some promising results, but then, we don’t have much to compare that to in terms of data.  Phil Widmer had one pretty bad race and another excellent one.

Andrew Newell is the most consistent of these guys, at least in terms of putting himself in the top 30 or top 20.  People keep waiting for Newell to put together a podium finish again, but keep in mind that his sprint results so far this season are right in line with how he normally does.

As for the women: Continue reading ›