What do I notice about the men’s podium from Saturday’s 15k classic race: Excepting Poltaranin, not much racing at this level between them. In fact, among the youngest men’s distance podiums I have on record (basically since the early 90’s): Saturday’s race is that unusually low value in the lower right corner. As […]
Also tagged Age, Analysis, Distance, men, World CupAnother interesting data-centric post appeared over at NCCSEF, and when it comes to data, I just can’t help myself but comment. This time we’ve got some slides that seem to be trying to draw a relationship between WJC results and winning a medal at (I believe) the Vancouver Olympic Games. We’re only shown the (partial) […]
Also tagged Analysis, medals, prediction, technicalBack on Monday I posted the graph shown below and posed a question: It turns out I didn’t ask my question very clearly, because I had to keep updating the post with clarifications. Â So that’s my fault. Â Maybe this time I’ll do better. Â What I did was plot a part of the time series of […]
Also tagged arianna follis, Distance, lina andersson, manuela henkel, marit bjoergen, prediction, stefanie boehler, womenFive mystery skiers, all women.  For each skier, their very next  (distance) race is a WC, OWG or WSC race.  Which of them are going to finish on the podium (top 3) in their very next race? To make things a bit more challenging, I’ve omitted the x axis labels (which is date, not age), […]
Also tagged mystery skier, prediction, quizWe’re picking up from where we left off last time, so go check that out to get up to speed. What happens if instead of only looking at two groups (skiers reaching the podium, skiers not reaching the podium) we get a little more sophisticated and include more information? First, let’s just look to see […]
Also tagged development, Distance, WJC/U23I recently received the following query from a reader: I have looked lately into the Junior Worlds results and World Cup/World Championships results of all 2010 Olympic Gold medalists and almost all of them had an outstanding careers while they raced as juniors…If our end goal is to win Olympics then we have to look […]
Also tagged development, Distance, medals, WJC/U23Watching Devon Kershaw’s (CAN) amazing race in the Olympic 50k this past season was both thrilling and a bit heartbreaking. Â There’s something of a reality distortion field that takes hold when the Olympics roll around that elevate the top three positions in a cross-country race to near mythic levels. This is at least slightly bizarre, […]
Also tagged devon kershaw, Distance