From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.

Did Petter Northug Have a Slight Edge On Marcus Hellner?

Written by

Joran

XCFeeds

That’s what Marcus Hellner says, according to FasterSkier. Let’s go to the numbers, shall we?

These are all the times these two guys raced against each other last season (distance races, anyway). Positive values indicate a victory for Hellner and vice versa. You can see Northug’s strength in mass start races, and that Northug had two unusually bad races. A handful of Northug’s wins were by very small margins and two of them were in stage race prologues, which, let’s face it, are kind of lame. Still, I would give Northug a slight edge here.