More strong early season performances from some Americans in Norway this weekend. How strong? Let’s take a look. First up is Sadie Bjornsen who had a very strong 5th in the 10k classic. Values above zero are good. The grey shaded region and red trend line represent how she has performed against these […]
Also tagged Analysis, beitostølen, men, USA, womenI don’t mean any disrespect by the title, there, it’s just that the Rybinsk World Cups haven’t been very well attended. I was told by a friend recently that the Canadians included as part of their WSC selection criteria the standard of “finishing in the top 20 and the top half of a World Cup […]
Also tagged depth, field size, preview, russia, rybinsk, World CupHow 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 […]
Also tagged bente skari martinsen, bjoern daehlie, counting, marit bjoergen, rant, records, victories, World CupSkiTrax and FIS are holding a fantasy World Cup contest, roughly modeled after the very popular fantasy baseball or fantasy football competitions that we all know and love. Â Basically, you pick four men and four women (plus a “bonus” man and woman, from outside the top 15 rankings from last year), and then your “team” […]
Also tagged contest, fantasy skiing, skitrax, World CupSo the big news in XC over the last few days has obviously been Russian skier Nikolai Pankratov being caught with some, shall we say, suspicious materials. Â The first thing I do when I hear things like this are of course to look up his results like the last time…
Also tagged doping, nikolai pankratovJust recently the guys at FasterSkier and the Nordic Commentary Project got together for a podcast, where they discussed a range of topics in international ski racing. Â One topic that they touched upon was the fact that cross country skiing has an ever increasing number of race formats. I listened with interest to that section, […]
Also tagged editorial, race format