Tour de Ski Recap
I didn’t do nearly as much writing about the Tour as I would have liked, but here are some graphs summarizing the way things shook out.
Men
Here’s a bird’s eye view of the men’s Tour, measured using seconds behind the median skier:
These sorts of bump charts are nice, as they can allow you to see at a glance some overall trends regarding how much movement there was in different stages. So clearly stages 4, 7 and 8 saw some of the biggest movement. Most of the movement in the final stage, a long grueling hill climb, happened at the back of the field, which sort of makes sense.
Here’s a look at how the Tour played out for the eventual top ten men: Read more
TdS Freestyle Sprint Recap
Once again, a bit after the fact…the heat times analysis for the freestyle sprint the other day.
Men
Starting with the finals:
That was decidedly slow, tactical final. Interesting that David Hofer had such fast times in the quarters and semis.
Semifinal 2 was slightly faster, but not by a ton.
Women
As for the women’s finalists:
Kikkan lost this battle, though we should note that Marit was skiing that course several seconds faster than her pretty much all day. Kikkan came pretty close in the final, though, and reading the reports makes it sound like her skis weren’t great.
A marked difference in the semifinals here as well.
Tour de Ski Rest Day Review
There’s just too much racing going on during the first half of January to comment on it all. But the first rest day of the Tour de Ski certainly deserves some notes. So here’s a look at the current leaders of the Tour, compared to how they’ve fared in previous years, starting with the men:
Legkov, Vylegzhanin and Angerer either haven’t participated or haven’t finished the two most recent Tours. So it will be interesting to see how they fare during the later stages, when things getting really grueling. Will Hellner drop off near the end of the Tour again? (I seem to recall his fading last year was due to something unfortunate; illness maybe? or bad skis?) On the other hand, will Bauer be able to ski his way up to the front again like he did two years ago?
Now for the women: Read more
Tour de France Graphs
The Tour de Carnage France is well underway. I planned to post a few graphs on Monday, the Tour’s first rest day, but a skiing post took precedence. So these graphs run through yesterday’s Stage 10.
As usual with these cycling posts I’m not going to say much. I’m just putting the graphs out there since I find them interesting and hope that others might too. Here’s the standard graph for this year’s Tour:
Each line corresponds to a single rider and all times are relative to the median rider (after that stage). And here’s the same thing broken down by team. It’s larger, so click through for the full version: Read more
Tour de Ski Recap: Part 2
Continuing on from my previous post, let’s move on to look at how different nations fared compared to last year’s Tour (click through for full versions):
The German men struggled, but mainly that shows up here as skiers dropping out rather than performing poorly. In fact, the one German man who made it all the way through the Tour performed about as well as the team did last year. The Swiss men are obviously somewhat improved, with Cologna winning and Curdin Perl skiing about as well as Cologna did last year.
The Russian men actually did about the same. They had lots of sprinters abandon the Tour, as they did last year, and those that finished ended up right where they were last year. One other piece that stands out is that Kris Freeman really only had one bad stage (reportedly due to poor skis) but otherwise he was holding steady in the middle of the field.
The women saw a much improved showing by the Swedes, despite losing Anna Haag after Stage 7. The German women, like the men, were decimated early on, with many skiers dropping out. Interestingly, this doesn’t seem radically different than what happened last year, either. The big losers here are clearly the Russian women, who by any reasonable measure had a terrible Tour compared to 2010. Lots of abandoned skiers and several of those that did finish were well off the back.
I mentioned in my earlier post this morning that if you graph some of the top individual’s performances using time behind the leader rather than time behind the median skier, some different things pop out:
Tour de Ski Recap: Part 1
Now that the entire Tour is in the books, here’s how it played out, at least the big picture:
I have to say, good job to Fransesc Soulie (AND) and Callum Watson (AUS) for hanging in there, despite being way off the back. Eight races in ten days is a tough feat, even for the folks at the back, so everyone who made it to Val di Fiemme deserves a pat on the back.
Kowalczyk was rarely seriously tested in this Tour. The Italians pulled reasonably close to her after Stage 6, but the Pole rebounded in Stages 7 and 8. Therese Johaug’s stunningly good final two stages, propelling her all the way into second place are readily apparent as well. On the men’s side, Dario Cologna pulled away after Stage 4 and despite yielding some time to Petter Northug on the final climb held on for the win. Northug’s big jump into second place after Stage 7 came largely on the shoulders of the 90 bonus seconds he racked up that day.
Finally, here’s a look at the top twelve skiers from this year’s Tour (who also participated in last year’s Tour) comparing their results from each year (click through for full versions): Read more
TdS 2010 vs 2011 Performance
Like last time a look at the performance of skiers from different nations in this year’s TdS and last year’s. As always, click through for full versions, as these are somewhat large:
Again, apologies if your favorite country isn’t shown.
The Russian men actually seem to be doing about the same, with a handful of skiers doing well early (sprinters, mostly) only to drop out, leaving a few mid-pack skiers. The main difference for Norway is Northug being somewhat off his game; the rest of the Norwegian men are roughly where they were last year. The German team’s struggles are clear, although mostly that’s been manifested by them dropping out rather than continuing and skiing really slowly.
The addition of Kalla and Haag, Swedish women are having a much, much stronger Tour this year. The Russian women are almost a complete disaster, although I’m less familiar with their various skiers, so I’m not sure how to judge differences in who they decided to send to the Tour. If it weren’t for Krista Lahteenmaki, the Finnish women would also look like a complete disaster. It’s also interesting to compare Kowalczyk’s progress this year to last. With the obvious caveat that the stage formats weren’t exactly the same last year, she continued to pile on time relative to the median skier past Stage 4 last year. This year she’s basically flatlined.
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