The folks at Nordic Commentary Project were kind enough to point me towards an interesting book that raises the issue of ‘home snow advantage’. I actually haven’t had a chance to read the book yet, but the question of a home snow advantage is certainly an interesting one and it’s one that I haven’t talked […]
Tagged Analysis, home snow advantageGee, I wonder what the big news in XC skiing this week could be? It sounds from the translated reports from Norway and Estonia that I’ve read that Andrus Veerpalu tested positive (both A and B samples) for human growth hormone, but is denying any wrongdoing. Naturally, this means I started the week off with: […]
Tagged doping, week in reviewFinnish sprinter Pirjo Muranen is one of several skiers hanging up their skis for good this year. I’ll be devoting a post to each of them over the next few Fridays, but first the Finnish sprinter. Muranen was certainly a successful skier, though not an overpowering one. She has an individual Gold and Bronze from […]
Tagged finland, pirjo muranen, retrospective, skier retirementPacing is a frequent topic of conversation in skiing, or really any endurance sport. Typically, the refrain is ‘don’t start to fast‘. In fact, I feel like I hardly ever hear people recommending that one should start a race harder. It must happen occasionally (and I’ll share a story about this later), but I suspect […]
Tagged pacing, splitsWith somewhat cryptic reports appearing that Andrus Veerpalu failed a drug test back in January (he retired just before World Championships this year), it’s probably a good idea to revisit my old post on the subject. In that post I considered the conventional wisdom about Veerpalu that he had an uncanny ability to pop outstanding […]
Tagged andrus veerpalu, dopingNo joke! Seriously, though, I thought about writing an April Fool’s post and then realized that I kind of hate April Fool’s posts. Probably because I’m an über-boring statistics geek who doesn’t know how to have fun at all. Or something. Winter’s ending elsewhere, though were I live it never really began. Spring here means […]
Tagged week in reviewIn a word, no. Â But the relationship between consistency and speed is a little subtle. Â To look at this question let’s take the distance results from major international competitions (OWG, WSC or World Cups) and restrict ourselves to those times when an athlete did at least ten races in a particular season. Â Then for each […]
Tagged Analysis, technical, variability, variation