A recap of what’s been going on here at StatisticalSkier.com this past week: – I finished up a four part series examining rookie performances on the World Cup scene by tackling sprinting. Â (Distance racing was covered last week.) – I updated the athlete ranking graphs, adding several more years and changing the color scheme slightly […]
Tagged week in reviewContinuing with our look at retiring skiers… Italian veteran Sabina Valbusa is hanging up the skis. Â Skiing runs in her family: she is the younger sister of Fulvio Valbusa. Â Not only that, she’s been racing for quite some time now: Â I have results for her dating from 1993 up to 2010. The five time Olympian […]
Tagged retirement, retrospective, sabina valbusaSince it’s Friday, here’s something kind of silly… Last week, I introduced the concept of victims and nemeses, for distance races. Â A nemesis is a skier who has beaten you on multiple occasions by a small margin (fewer than ten seconds). Â Victims are just the reverse: people you have beaten on multiple occasions by fewer […]
Tagged gadflies, nemeses, punching bags, victimsBjoern Daehlie (NOR) is generally considered one of the greatest male skiers in history (or even the greatest). Â He raced during much of the 90’s until his career was cut short by a rollerskiing accident in which he injured his back. Â One of his biggest competitors during this time was Vladimir Smirnov (SOV, KAZ). Â Which […]
Tagged bjoern daehlie, head to head, vladimir smirnovSince the athlete rankings I calculated for cross country skiers seem to be fairly popular, I thought I’d push up the schedule on releasing the biathlon versions. The general methodology is the same as what I outlined here. Â Biathlon doesn’t have sprint races, so there’s just one category of rankings, instead of splitting things up […]
Tagged biathlon, rankingsThis 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 […]
Tagged Analysis, rookies, Sprint, US Skiing, World CupA big hello to all the visitors I’ve had over the past week from nensa.net and fasterskier.com (and an super big thanks to those guys for linking to me!). Â And an extra special hello from the individual who landed here via a Google search for “petter northug sexy”. Â Can’t argue with you there, now can […]