Continuing with my summer reading of XC news, I again perused an one of FIS’s short interviews, this time with Switzerland’s Laurien Van der Graaff. Unlike Masako Ishida, whom we considered earlier this week, Van der Graaff is a sprint specialist, and a freestyle sprint specialist at that. Van der Graaff really did have a […]
Also tagged freestyle, laurien van der graaff, Sprint, womenI was reading FIS’s interview with Japan’s Masako Ishida with interest, because I’ve really been rooting for her to pull off some strong results. In the interview, she mentions that some of her goals for next season include increasing her presence in the top 5, and in particular making the jump up to some podium […]
Also tagged Analysis, classic, japan, masako ishidaKikkan Randall, the reigning women’s World Cup sprint champion, obviously had a pretty darn good season last year. How does it stack up against some of the best sprint seasons put together since 2005-2006? The first thing that stood out to me is that if you rank the best women’s sprint seasons, Randall participated in […]
Also tagged kikkan randall, SprintBy request, we’re looking at how the length of World Cup sprints has changed over time. Specifically, since the length in time of the effort is really more meaningful than the length of the course in terms of distance, that’s what we’ll consider. So the following graph shows the average of the top five qualification […]
Also tagged Sprint, times, trendsSince I’m starting to accumulate a reasonable collection of heat times from World Cup sprint races, I thought it might be interesting to compare general trends between the few seasons I have data on. The biggest trends that you can typically see are the differences in tactics between the men and women. Generally what I’ve […]
Also tagged heat times, SprintEveryone wants to nab podiums at the World Cup level, which means everyone can be pretty fascinated with the development characteristics of those skiers who end up on the podium. Here’s yet another way to slice that. If we take the skiers who’ve attained at least one podium result at the WC level between 2006-2007 […]
Also tagged Age, development, Distance, men, Sprint, womenA few other athletes that I was less familiar with are also retiring, according to FIS, beginning with France’s Emilie Vina. Naturally, I head over to Wikipedia and discover that apparently she’s a non-commissioned officer? Huh. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she were a biathlete, I suppose, but that’s not a combination you see […]
Also tagged career retrospective, emilie vina, France, retirement