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Race Snapshot: IBU WC 3 Men’s/Women’s Sprint

Kind of a rough day for the Americans today in biathlon, but some solid Canadian results.  Brendan Green and Scot Perras both had good races as well as Zina Kocher.

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Race Snapshot: La Clusaz Men’s/Women’s Distance

I think there were high hopes for Kris Freeman in today’s 30km, particularly after yesterdays monster article in FasterSkier, but I still suspect he’s likely to do better in 15km events.  Still, not a terrible race for him at all, and a good day all around for the North Americans.  Once again, though, the women’s points are a little screwy thanks to Björgen & Co. skiing away from the field.

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Week In Review: Friday Dec 17th

Once again, many thanks to Skaði Nordic for sponsoring this week’s Week In Review.  Here’s what been cooking:

Holy cow!  Did I really do all that this past week?  Good for me.

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How Many WC Victories Does Björgen Really Have?

How embarrassing is it for our sport that no one seems to be able to reliably count the number of World Cup victories of our best athletes?

Here’s the deal.  Marit Björgen has attracted some attention lately for the number of total WC victories to her name, which is generally thought to be at least 40, although different people will report slightly different numbers.  For example, see these Scandinavian news reports on the topic here and here.

As far as I can tell, everyone is getting the count for Björgen wrong.  This is harder to count than is seems, so I’m going to discuss this in what will probably be painful detail.

First, we need to agree on what counts as a World Cup race.  Now, I’m sure you’re wondering, how could we be confused about what is or is not a WC race?  There are two basic issues:

  • Do we count the overall results from stage race formats like the Tour de Ski, the World Cup Final or the most recent Nordic Opener in Kuusamo?  Athletes receive World Cup points for the overall standings, as well as for the results of each individual stage.  If you get WC points for it, isn’t it a WC “race”?
  • Prior to 1999, I believe, the Olympics and World Championships were counted as part of the World Cup schedule, but that is not the case anymore.  This becomes important for comparing people like Björgen to other greats like Bente Skari Martinsen or Bjorn Dählie.  Why?  Well, this is debatable, but skiers now are faced with more races to choose from in Olympic or World Championship years, whereas before those races were simply folded into the WC schedule.  So Björgen has faced more of a tradeoff than Skari or Dählie did in choosing to skip normal WC’s in order to prepare for other major events like Olympics or WSC’s.

I’m not going to argue for a “correct” answer to either of these issues, I’ll simply count victories as best as I can and include enough information for you to go whichever way you want for the final tally.  Here we go… Continue reading ›

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WC Points Tracker

They aren’t what stat-heads like myself would choose to do “serious” stuff, but World Cup points are what makes the XC world go round.  FIS provides a few tools for looking up athlete’s WC points here and here.  They’re pretty decent, by their standards, allowing you to switch between Overall, Distance and Sprint points, filter by nation, season, etc.

That’s pretty cool, but we can do better.  You know those PDF reports that FIS issues after each race, tracking the WC points for each athlete and each race?  Yeah, putting that data in a PDF is like locking it away in a hermetically sealed chamber guarded by feral dragons on crack.  Less cool.

As a modest public service, I’m aiming to make this data more available.  Later today there will be a link over on the right that will take you to a Google spreadsheet that mimics the PDF reports that FIS publishes.  I have it set so that anyone with the link can view it and download it in various formats to put it in your own spreadsheet application of choice (or any other application if you prefer).  Then you can mess around with it on your own!

Here’s a simple visualization of the total WC points so far this season, showing only those athletes with at least 30 total WC points:

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Race Snapshot: IBU WC 3 Distance Race

Great day for Sara Studebaker in 21st!  The results look a little shook up on the men’s side, as well as the women’s to some degree.  Lowell Bailey had a decent result despite some dodgy shooting.

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Is Qualifying In The Top Ten A Good Sign For Kikkan?

So US coach Chris Grover mentioned to FasterSkier.com that he thought that when Kikkan Randall qualifies in the top ten that’s a really good sign that she has a good chance to make the finals.

I did this once before with an interesting quote of his, and I feel kind of bad.  I’m not trying to pick on him, but this is such an obvious thing to check with some actual data, I just can’t pass it up.

Here’s Randall’s qualification and final ranks for WC, WSC and OWG sprint races:

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