Conventional wisdom holds (so I’m told) that World Cup skiers go faster these days for a variety of reasons: improved grooming technology, improved equipment/waxing, larger athlete pool, better training/diet (on average) etc. Â It would be neat if this trend showed up in results data. Â Namely, have the top times for races of a set distance […]
Also tagged race times, trend, xc“Young” is a relative term, of course, which becomes clearer to me with each passing year. Â But there are successful cross-country skiers over quite a wide age range, so it might be fun to focus in on some of the younger ones. Â They are likely the names we’ll be seeing over and over down the […]
Also tagged best young skierWhen most people say that World Cup skiers are animals, they probably mean they are fierce, strong competitors. Â I got my PhD in statistics in a department that found itself working quite often with very strong wildlife biology and ecology departments, so for me that reference leads me to think, “Well, what if they really […]
Also tagged Analysis, R, survival, technical, World CupThere are two somewhat different ways in which you could be considered a skating or classic specialist. Â First, you can be noticeably better at one technique than the other. Â Second, you could just only do races of one technique or the other. These two situations might overlap, or they might not. Â In any case, they […]
Also tagged specialization, techniqueThere’s been some commentary over the last several years remarking that the Norwegian men, usually quite dominant, have been struggling to crush their competitors into tiny little pieces. Â From the perspective of US skiing fans that might seem absurd, but for better or for worse, Norway has exceedingly high expectations. It occurred to me, though, […]
Also tagged men, norway, trendsBack on Monday I posted the graph shown below and posed a question: It turns out I didn’t ask my question very clearly, because I had to keep updating the post with clarifications. Â So that’s my fault. Â Maybe this time I’ll do better. Â What I did was plot a part of the time series of […]
Also tagged arianna follis, lina andersson, manuela henkel, marit bjoergen, podium, prediction, stefanie boehler, womenYet another in a continuing series. Â This time, Italy. Â First up is the original form of the graph where each panel contains athletes grouped by their best performance at WJCs or U23s (1-5, 6-10, etc.):
Also tagged development, italy, U23, WJC