This post is somewhat of a teaser trailer for the sorts of things we can do once we have a complete record of major international ski results stretching back to the 70’s. A natural and possibly controversial question is whether the World Cup field has become more or less competitive over time. Â Intuitively, I think […]
Also tagged classic, history, interval start, menContinuing on from last time, we’ll single out a handful of skiers who appear to do significantly better in shorter sprint courses. Same methodology as before led me to pluck out the following three skiers: In general, the effects in this direction tended to be weaker and less dramatic, even at the extreme ends of […]
Also tagged Analysis, caroline weibel, course length, maurice manificat, Sprint, timo simonlatserThe notion of an athlete preferring distance races of a particular length is pretty familiar, but what about sprinting? The differences between a 0.8km and a 1.8km sprint course may not seem like much compared to the differences between a 15km and 30km race. But (while I’m not a physiology expert) it seems likely to […]
Also tagged Analysis, holly brooks, jeori kindschi, petra majdic, Sprint, valentina novikovaThat’s an easy one: probably not. I’m referring, of course, to his recent pronouncements about the upcoming season, in which he claims that he will win 7 World Cups, the Tour de Ski overall title, as well as 3 golds at World Championships. Obviously, given Northug’s history I’m not inclined to take this too seriously. […]
Also tagged idle speculation, petter northugOPA Cup races (also known as Alpen Cup) and Scandinavian Cup races have acquired an informal reputation as a sort of “minor league” racing circuit, relative to the World Cup. Â One question this leads me to ask is exactly how much movement is there between these two circuits? To answer this question I took data […]
Also tagged opa cup, scandinavian cupFollowing up from last time, we’ll look a little more closely at the individual trends among some of the top Swedish women in distance and sprint events. First the distance skiers (click through for a larger version): Not surprisingly, Charlotte Kalla is generally the top performer here. But notice that there’s a bit of a […]
Also tagged Distance, individual, sweden, womenReading the recent interview with Rikard Grip, the Swedish women’s coach got me thinking about how they’ve fared recently. From a very broad perspective for the whole team, we have the following in distance events: Clearly their depth has greatly improved, as evidenced by the dramatic rise in the number of top 30 results per […]
Also tagged sweden, women