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Victims & Nemeses

This concept is shamelessly stolen from these guys (Thanks, Colin!) and is decidedly in the “less serious” end of the spectrum.  A potential victim is awarded one point every time you defeat them by fewer than ten seconds, two points if the race happens to be an Olympic or World Championship event.  The same goes for nemeses, only in reverse: these are people who’ve beaten you by fewer than ten seconds.  Below are lists containing the top victims and nemeses for Petter Northug for the 2009-2010 season.  As you can see, Northug doesn’t have much in the way of nemeses; he’s just too darn fast for that.  He does, however, enjoy punishing Germans, Axel Teichmann in particular:

[table id = 17]

[table id = 18]

Obviously, I can calculate this for anyone I choose.  At some point it would be nice to link my database to a webform on the blog that would allow readers to look this stuff up on their own, but that’s a big project.  Perhaps down the road…for the time being, you’ll have to be content with me periodically posting the victims and nemeses are particular skiers from time to time.

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2010 05 02 Joran Fun Stuff Comments (4) Permalink

Performance vs Age Redux: Grover’s Graph

[Note: This article first appeared here.]

Chris Grover recently mentioned a graph,

“Every athlete who is being nominated to the U.S. Ski Team this year has something in common.  They are on the path to winning a medal. This medal could from the World Cup, World Championship or Olympic Winter Games, but they are on this path.  If we graph these athletes’ ages versus their FIS points and plot those graphs against the progress of the best cross country skiers in the world, we can see that they are on the path.”

Being a statistics and data junkie, I excitedly scrolled up and down the article looking for this graph.  Alas, it was nowhere to be found!  But it sure sounded like a cool idea, so I thought I’d give it a try myself.  I can’t read Chris Grover’s mind and know precisely what he meant, so what follows is simply my interpretation of what I think he might have meant, with some of my own twists added in. Continue reading ›

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2010 05 01 Joran Analysis Comments (0) Permalink

Trends In US Skiing Performance: Sprint

[Note: This article first appeared here.]

Welcome back for the second half of my article looking at trends in performance by US skiers (as a group) on the international scene.  Last time we looked at distance events, so now it’s time to turn to sprinting.  Before we move on, if you haven’t read the first half of this article, please go do so now.  It can be found here.  I laid out many important caveats in that piece that remain in effect here.

Continue reading ›

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2010 05 01 Joran Analysis Comments (0) Permalink

Trends In US Skiing Performance: Distance

[Note: This article first appeared here.]

An endearing facet of cross country ski racing is the seasonal rhythm it introduces into our lives.  Summer, fall and winter each hold unique rituals and landmarks of training, racing and recovery.  Spring brings with it its own rituals, among them retrospection on the season just completed.  Athletes around the nation use these months to reflect on their season, evaluate their performance and plan for the future.

In recent years, the same has been true for the US skiing community as a whole.  In particular, each spring we are treated to a new round of articles discussing the progress, or lack thereof, of US skiing.  Fasterskier.com has been a prominent forum for many of these discussions.

I have followed these discussions with some interest and wade into the topic with considerable trepidation.  I want to be clear that while I was a ski racer for much of my life (occasionally even achieving a level of not-slowness) I claim no expertise on how a nation ought to develop international caliber athletes.  I have no racing or coaching experience that could even remotely be considered close to an international level of competition.  However, I do possess a large quantity of data on skiing results, I am more qualified than many as a data analyst, and an obvious thing to do with skiing results data is to look at trends in performance over time.  If I want to write data oriented articles on skiing, I’ll have to take up the topic eventually.  Hopefully, I won’t make any enemies!

Continue reading ›

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2010 05 01 Joran Analysis Comments (2) Permalink

Variability In World Cup Ski Racers

[Note: This article first appeared here.]

Kris Freeman recently commented on his FasterSkier.com blog, “I am a serious contender for the most volatile and inconsistent skier on the world cup”, in reference to his disappointing races at the Vancouver Olympics.

Every cross-country ski racer knows that you can’t always race at your best, all the time. Some days you just feel better than others.  Often there’s an obvious reason (sickness, fatigue, overtraining etc.) but sometimes not. Racers work very hard to condition their bodies to perform at very high levels, repeatedly, throughout a season. However, it is inevitable that there are some differences from race to race.

These observation lead naturally to a topic that’s not very “sexy”, but it’s what stats geeks think about all the time: variation.  Let’s look at some data regarding variability in ski racing and see what we can learn.

Continue reading ›

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2010 05 01 Joran Analysis Comments (2) Permalink

Skiing Performance and Age

[Note: This article first appeared here.]

The Italian legend Maurilio De Zolt and  Norwegian great Hilde Pedersen are excellent examples of elite cross country ski racers who continued to excel at the international level into their 40’s.  While continuing to compete on the World Cup circuit at that age may not be common, cross country skiing is known for its athletes developing later than in other sports.  Top skiers often continue to be competitive through their late 30’s.

In light of these observations, it is natural to ask what precisely the relationship is between performance and age among elite ski racers. To do this, we will focus on major international events (World Cup (WC), Olympic (OWG) and World Championship (WSC)) and restrict our attention to seasons where an athlete participated in a “significant proportion” of the available events. In this case, we’ll be fairly lax and include any season by an athlete where they competed in at least five such events. (Elite athletes at the extreme ends of the age spectrum might not be on the World Cup circuit full time, and we’d like to include these people.) Continue reading ›

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2010 05 01 Joran Analysis Comments (1) Permalink