I’ve fussed in the past about the weaknesses of FIS points in distance events, but they really are quite useful. Â Sprint events, however, just don’t have an equivalently simple and useful numerical summary. Â I’ve resorted to using the final finishing rank (i.e. what place you came in, after the elimination rounds), but I’ve never been […]
Also tagged Analysis, Athlete Ranking, technicalNow that I have some athlete similarity code up and running, let’s take it for a spin, shall we? The basic idea is to pick a skier (Beckie Scott in this case) and then mine my results database for skiers who’ve had similar careers. Â This is a fairly complicated task with a lot of steps. […]
Also tagged athlete similarity, beckie scott, DistanceThis is the final post in a four part series on rookie performance on the World Cup. Â To recap: we’re trying to quantify differences in the level of preparation among athletes from different nations upon first entering the World Cup circuit. Â A “rookie skier” for our purposes is one who’s done seven or fewer races […]
Also tagged Analysis, rookies, US Skiing, World CupThis is another installment in a series (see here and here for important background and setup; if you get confused read them first) where I’ve been looking at comparing performances of rookie skiers on the World Cup. Â In those previous two posts I looked at distance racing, so now it’s time to turn our attention […]
Also tagged Analysis, rookies, US Skiing, World Cup[Note: This article first appeared here.] Chris Grover recently mentioned a graph, “Every athlete who is being nominated to the U.S. Ski Team this year has something in common. Â They are on the path to winning a medal. This medal could from the World Cup, World Championship or Olympic Winter Games, but they are on […]
Also tagged Age, Analysis, Distance, US Skiing[Note: This article first appeared here.] Welcome back for the second half of my article looking at trends in performance by US skiers (as a group) on the international scene. Â Last time we looked at distance events, so now it’s time to turn to sprinting. Â Before we move on, if you haven’t read the first […]
Also tagged Analysis, trends, US Skiing[Note: This article first appeared here.] The Italian legend Maurilio De Zolt and  Norwegian great Hilde Pedersen are excellent examples of elite cross country ski racers who continued to excel at the international level into their 40’s.  While continuing to compete on the World Cup circuit at that age may not be common, cross country […]
Also tagged Age, Analysis, Distance