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Battle Of The Sexes

A strange discussion has suddenly broken out over at FasterSkier in response to some comments that Marit Björgen made about how she’d like be able to race the 50km distance just like the men do. A reader  sent me a note asking if I’d specifically address this statement from the comments: Looking at the times […]

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Checking In On The Scando Cup

As always, it’s nice to see plenty of North Americans jaunting around Europe getting in some good racing. I returned from my travels this weekend to learn that some Americans had some strong results at the Scandinavian Cups in Estonia. Let’s take a bit of a closer look at the distance results, shall we? First […]

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Rybinsk: Sprint Recap

I only have the raw result this time around, so nothing fancy. Instead, we’ll just pick out some people who looked like they had some unusually good races again. There’s a lot less to say here, since it’s a lot harder to measure sprinting performance in ways that account for the strength of the field. […]

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Rybinsk: Pursuit Recap

A bit delayed, since I spent a goodly portion of Saturday running, and most of the entire weekend without internet. With the small fields it can be a little tough to interpret results from these events, to be sure. Particularly when the distance race was a pursuit, which often lead to artificially low FIS points […]

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Rybinsk: Attendance

I feel like a grade school teacher, checking off names and such, but let’s see how many folks actually showed up in Rybinsk compared to past years: I’ve plotted the number of racers and nations present in the sprint and distance events in Rybinsk, along with the corresponding averages for all other World Cup events […]

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Editorial: Ranking Lists – What Are They Good For?

After some thought, I feel compelled to expand a bit on my post regarding the US National Ranking List (NRL). Actually, my thoughts on the subject apply to points lists and athlete ranking in XC skiing more generally. Ranking athletes via some numerical system can be both fun and necessary. It’s fun for skiing fans […]

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Race Snapshot: IBU WC 7 Men/Women Pursuit

More strong racing from Lowell Bailey and Sara Studebaker.

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