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.

Is Biathlon More Volatile Than Cross Country?

Written by

Joran

XCFeeds

Yes.

That whole shooting bit. Tricky, isn’t it?

So maybe a bit more discussion would be good. This graph shows the distributions of the median absolute deviations (MADs) by athlete and season, for those athletes who competed in at least five major competitions in that season.

Biathletes, due to wild swings in shooting performance, are much more likely to have results that bounce around from good to bad.