It’s always fun when the World Cup takes a turn through North America, although I’m a cranky old traditionalist, so sprints aren’t my favorite event, and city sprints are even further down the list for me. One challenge that comes up in trying to assess performance in WCs held in North America is that the […]
Also tagged canada, city sprint, men, Sprint, USA, women, World CupListening to the FasterSkier podcast today, Topher and Nat discussed the notion that the Canadian men frequently seem to struggle early in the season. If we’re talking about how “the Canadian men” perform on the WC level, let’s focus on Kershaw, Harvey and Babikov, since they’ve been the “regulars” on the WC circuit for the […]
Also tagged canadan, Distance, early season, men, Sprint, trend, World CupI got a request for some similar graphs from my podium development posts, but focused more on the domestic scene. So, for example, we had this graph: This showed the age at which future WC podium finishers achieved a particular milestone. So let’s turn to just US and Canadian skiers who have simply participated in […]
Also tagged development, World CupContinuing on from last time, we’ll single out a handful of skiers who appear to do significantly better in shorter sprint courses. Same methodology as before led me to pluck out the following three skiers: In general, the effects in this direction tended to be weaker and less dramatic, even at the extreme ends of […]
Also tagged caroline weibel, course length, maurice manificat, Sprint, timo simonlatser, World CupThe notion of an athlete preferring distance races of a particular length is pretty familiar, but what about sprinting? The differences between a 0.8km and a 1.8km sprint course may not seem like much compared to the differences between a 15km and 30km race. But (while I’m not a physiology expert) it seems likely to […]
Also tagged holly brooks, jeori kindschi, petra majdic, Sprint, valentina novikova, World CupI was reading FIS’s interview with Japan’s Masako Ishida with interest, because I’ve really been rooting for her to pull off some strong results. In the interview, she mentions that some of her goals for next season include increasing her presence in the top 5, and in particular making the jump up to some podium […]
Also tagged classic, japan, masako ishida, World CupThis is by no means a comprehensive look at how we fared this year, just one perspective based on a single graph. One of the things that I pay closest attention to is depth: how many different skiers do we have performing at a particular level. The reason for this is that for relatively “small” […]
Also tagged 2011-2012, canada, men, north america, season recap, USA, women, World Cup