FasterSkier

Category: Tech

Technical articles, including how to guides, detailed information on equipment, and the science behind it all.
  • 19 Miles of Cable and One Espresso Machine: Biathlon, from Trail to TV

    19 Miles of Cable and One Espresso Machine: Biathlon, from Trail to TV

    A small selection of the 19 miles of cable used to televise the World Cup biathlon races in Fort Kent.

    If you want to know about how biathlon travels from the trails onto television, the first thing you need to know about is cable.

    In Fort Kent, the site of Maine’s second biathlon World Cup in as many weeks, the stuff is everywhere.

    It’s mostly black, but also orange, blue, white, red, green, and yellow. It snakes along the sides of the trails, hangs neatly coiled from racks, and explodes into massive, spaghetti-like snarls when it reaches the television compound, at the top of a steep hill overlooking the stadium here.

    There’s some 19 miles of it in all, connecting 33 cameras to the two trailers used to produce the coverage. The longest run was 4,800 feet—“through conduits, culverts, underneath roads,” according to Rob Heinz, a utility technician in charge of the set-up.

    From the feed of races, it’s tough to see the kind of work it takes to produce the television broadcast. Even on site, at the venue, it’s still hard to tell—by the time the races go off, the cables and cameras are hidden, the producers and technical staff blending into a swarm of volunteers.

    But in fact, capturing the competitions and beaming them back across the Atlantic to Europe is a massive undertaking—one that demands more than 100 trained workers, including 54 who flew from here from Germany.

    Heinz, a gruff, bulky, mohawked New Yorker, is a member of the crew brought in by Kent Gordis Productions, the firm contracted to televise the two biathlon World Cup weekends in northern Maine—the circuit’s first trip to the U.S. in seven years.

    It takes a trained eye to distinguish the crew members from volunteers, in the hive of the stadium. For the most part, they move about unobtrusively. But look closely, and you can pick them out—they’re a little bigger, sport sweatshirts rather than Patagonia or North Face jackets, and are the only people on site who would dare light up a cigarette.

    Yeah, it’s TV, but it’s not glamorous work—all that cable has to get carried, strung, and labeled by somebody.

    The trail heading up from Fort Kent's stadium to the TV production headquarters.

    “We build it all, and then we troubleshoot,” Heinz said. “Whatever they tell us to do, as long as the check clears.”

    Biathlon may be small potatoes in the U.S., where the only way to see the sport is on the internet. But in Europe, it’s huge: nearly six million Germans watched a single broadcast of last week’s races in Presque Isle.

    Work at the two Maine venues began all the way back on January 27th, when crew members for Gordis arrived.

    They came with two production trucks rented from a Florida company—$12 million behemoths with top-of-the-line audio and video equipment—along with all that cable, and a massive, house-sized generator to power it all.

    Between Fort Kent and Presque Isle, there was 150,000 feet of cable in total—a quantity that is essentially unprecedented, Heinz said, except for maybe the Super Bowl.

    “Nothing even approaches this kind of numbers,” he said.

    In fact, one of the main reasons that the Florida company, F+F Productions, got the contract to supply the equipment for the biathlon races was because they already owned so much cable–which they acquired by pulling it out of last year’s Olympic venues in Vancouver.

    Rob Heinz.

    “That’s how they got this gig,” said Dave Crosson, who’s on site as one of two technical managers overseeing production for Gordis.

    Because Germany is wild about biathlon, there are actually two separate television feeds that are broadcast from northern Maine—one for the German networks, and one for all the other countries that show the races, like Norway and Russia.

    The German station, ZDF, gets more shots and interviews of German athletes, while the international audience sees a more generic show.

    Gordis brought in its workers from the U.S. and Quebec; ZDF has its own biathlon production team, including journalists, cameramen, video mixers, and, crucially, its own espresso machine, housed in an editing trailer.

    “That’s very important,” said Chris Kirdorf, a ZDF set manager. “You can’t drink the American coffee.”

    That Bases Loaded Moment

    Biathlon has exploded in popularity in Europe in the past decade, and one of the reasons is that it makes for great television.

    Graphics—which are generated electronically by the timing system and targets—help viewers follow athletes while they’re out on course. And each trip to the shooting range provides 30 seconds of some of the most concentrated suspense in sports.

    “In every competition, you have that bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, down-by-three-runs moment, when it’s make or break for the athlete on the firing line,” said Max Cobb, the CEO of the U.S. Biathlon Association (USBA). “Who stands on the podium comes down to that last, final shot…and then you still have a ski race to go after that.”

    Ironically, biathlon isn’t televised at all in the U.S.—a bid to package the races in Maine and show them nationally fell through when some key USBA contacts retired, Cobb said.

    But in Europe, the sport is one of the largest. The International Biathlon Union (IBU) calculates that its World Cup season in 2010 drew nearly 500 million total viewing sessions—and that’s not including the Olympics, which tallied 300 million more.

    More of the cable used for the broadcast in Fort Kent.

    The rights for the broadcasting are sold by the IBU to the European Broadcast Union—a confederation of stations across the continent. Germany is a huge market, as evidenced by the 5.8 million from that country that saw the prime time mixed relay last weekend in Presque Isle, but Russia and Norway are, too.

    Money from the rights makes up the bulk of the revenue for the IBU, according to Nicole Resch, its president.

    The last four-year contract, from 2006 to 2010, was for 40 million euros ($55 million), according to numbers obtained by the Christian Science Monitor. Resch wouldn’t release the figures for the new one, from 2011 to 2014, but it’s reportedly 60 percent larger—nearly $90 million—according to one industry insider.

    In addition to direct revenue from the rights, the exposure from television also helps the IBU attract its sponsors, which include BMW, beer producer Erdinger, and energy and heating companies.

    The Test Event

    The racing in Fort Kent happens down in the stadium and out on the trails, but the TV production happens in the two F+F trucks at the top of the hill.

    Each one takes inputs from half the cameras, and the feeds are shared on a network to give each truck access to all 33 shots.

    One truck is used for the international feed, and the other for the ZDF broadcast—which is directed by a lean, well-coiffed German named Andreas Lauterbach.

    On the last day before the first race in Fort Kent, Lauterbach is in position at the middle of his truck’s main

    The wall of images in one of the production trucks.

    console. To his right is the technical director, a heavyset, balding German with a dazzling array of different-colored buttons in front of him, which he uses to switch between cameras and effects at Lauterbach’s command.

    To Lauterbach’s left is his spotter, a mustachioed older man with even less hair than the technical director. In front of all of them is a large wall of LCD screens, each of which is divided into different pictures. In total, there are 78 separate images, showing graphics, commercials, slow-motion relay clips, and the feeds from all 33 cameras.

    On this day, last Wednesday, Lauterbach and his team are directing a TV test race, to make sure everything’s firing before the real competitions get underway.

    Instead of the best biathletes in the world, the start list includes a mix of former and current second-tier skiers. There are two coaches from the Maine Winter Sports Center, Seth Hubbard and Will Sweetser, along with five other area athletes: Katrina Howe, Russell Currier, Melinda McAleese, Lauren Jacobs, and Meagan Toussaint.

    As the screens display images of the athletes preparing in the start area, Lauterbach sits at his post in the darkened truck, giving directions.

    “Get me some bib numbers.” “International again. Go to 13. Go to four.”

    With the huge number of screens, it takes a while to figure out what’s going on. The live German feed for ZDF is being shown in a large picture on the upper lefthand side of the wall, while the international feed is directly adjacent, to the right.

    The rest of the cameras show live shots from around the course, and in the stadium. Each has a number, and when Lauterbach wants to switch, he simply tells the technical director.

    The athletes get going, and begin making their way around the course. On the massive climb just a few hundred

    Craftsbury Green Racing Project's Lauren Jacobs as Finnish biathlete Mari Laukkanen.

    meters from the start, it’s clear they’re not the same caliber of skiers the announcers are used to seeing—the German commentary is being piped into the truck through a PA system—and there’s some good-natured chuckling.

    As the racers approach the first checkpoint, each gets a split time. They’ve all been assigned names of elite biathletes: Hubbard is Belarussian Olympic medalist Darya Domracheva; Currier is Julian Eberhard, an Austrian.

    Lauterbach’s job seems close to impossible—he somehow has to keep tabs on all the athletes and all the screens, then pick out the shots and graphics he wants from the nearly 80 images. He’s middle aged, wearing glasses, tight jeans, a soft shell, and a turtle-neck, and he seems at home in his chair in front of the console.

    Lauterbach only gets agitated when the technical director doesn’t switch between cameras quickly enough, and even then, his sharpness seems more like a way to signal urgency than actual irritation.

    “Zoom out. Follow—zoom in. And, wait for four. Go to four, and, graphic.”

    On the first loop, it’s Sweetser drawing the attention—he even features in a slow-motion replay. Hubbard cleans his first shooting, and the announcers call it: “Darya Domracheva—suuuupaaah.” But gradually, it becomes clear that Currier, a U.S. National Team member in bib 77, has taken the lead. The spotter lets Lauterbach know when Currier enters each shot.

    “Seventy-seven is coming in 27.”

    For the most part, the German feed mirrors the international one, until Lauterbach cuts to a finish-line interview—actually one member of the ZDF crew talking to another.

    The whole thing wraps up in roughly 40 minutes, from start to finish. Then, Lauterbach chats on an intercom with each of his cameramen, making sure all the shots are dialed in, unseemly cables hidden from view, and advertising banners getting their full exposure.

    For the American and Canadian cameramen, it’s rare they’ll have an opportunity like this one, to shoot biathlon or cross-country skiing. The operators in the key positions are experienced Germans, but according to Crosson, the

    Director Andreas Lauterbach (L), with his technical director to the right.

    technical manager, everyone else knows enough that the pictures heading over to Europe will still be decent.

    “It’s a job, it’s a craft, it’s an art—they know how to do it,” he said. “They are professional enough to know what is a good shot—TV is basically seeing what other people did, and trying to make it better.”

    The test race over, the television crew still has to get through four days and six races before they can even think about going home. They’re all staying in Presque Isle, an hour away, and consequently were contending with early-morning wake-ups and long days in single-digit temperatures.

    They’ll remain in northern Maine for another day after the athletes, coaches, and spectators have departed—through early Tuesday morning, when Heinz said he’d be on a flight back to New York.

    “Three weeks—missing the family, icy weather,” he said. “I get into LaGuardia at 9:40….I’ll be having lunch at home.”

  • Timing Snafus Slow SuperTour Results, But Officials Say Accuracy Uncompromised

    Timing Snafus Slow SuperTour Results, But Officials Say Accuracy Uncompromised

    Two of the photo beams used to record times in Thursday's races in West Yellowstone.

    Thursday’s weather in West Yellowstone was a big improvement from earlier this week, but race timers still found themselves in a perfect storm during the season opening SuperTour races.

    Coaches and athletes were in the dark all afternoon Thursday, when results from the double sprint qualifier were delayed for hours due to timing snafus. Two different finish lines, a skeleton crew of volunteers due to the holiday, a tight racing schedule, and an overambitious timer all were ingredients in a recipe for problems, if not disaster.

    Ultimately, according to Technical Delegate Al Pokorny, “it worked.” And results did come through, thanks to a volunteer who diligently recorded finishers with a hand plunger with impressive accuracy. But race timer Ernie Page still said that he could “write a book” on what he would do differently.

    “Today was not my best day,” he said.

    The problems on Thursday started with the cold. With highs in the single digits, race organizers wanted no more than an hour separating the start of the classic and freestyle qualifiers.

    “We talked about actually extending it out ten more minutes,” Pokorny said. “It was really an athlete safety issue…we felt that having them out any longer than an hour would not be in their best interest.”

    When organizers originally made their plans, there were some 180 athletes signed up for the two races—making for roughly 45 minutes of racing. That left a 15-minute window for Page and volunteers to move equipment between separate finish lines for the classic and skate courses.

    “That obviously would have been more than enough time,” Pokorny said.

    But at the last minute, another batch of entries came in, cutting the time between races down to some six minutes. For many timers, that margin would be a deal-breaker. But Page said that he relishes a challenge.

    “They weren’t pressuring me to do it faster…It was my optimism that was the problem,” he said. “The six minutes was tantalizing—we almost made it.”

    As the last female finishers trickled across the line in the classic sprint, Page had already begun digging holes in the snow at the end of the skate course, to set up a pair of photo beams that automatically record finishers. A few minutes later, volunteers began moving the timing equipment.

    When the first men’s starter, CXC’s Garrott Kuzzy, flew past on his way into the final 500-meter finishing loop, things got frantic. Officials were overheard shouting expletives, and one volunteer even cried, “where’s the finish line?!”

    As the first six men crossed, Page’s photo beams were not quite in place. But he had backup in the form of Jeff Fereday and Mark Pastore: two volunteers with hand plungers, who recorded each athlete’s finish time with the press of a button.

    In the end, organizers used Pastore’s times, since his plunges were never more than a tenth of a second off when cross-referenced with the times that did get recorded by the photo beam, Page said. Both Pastore and Fereday, Page added, were “close to perfect.”

    The man with the closest finish among the top six starters was the University of Alaska-Fairbanks’s David Norris, who was ninth, .12 seconds behind Central Cross-Country’s Brian Gregg. The winner, Drew Goldsack, the third man to cross the line, was nearly seven seconds ahead of second place, Alaska Pacific University’s Lars Flora.

    ““I’m confident in the hand plunges,” Page said, though he added that he’s “gratified as hell that there wasn’t a really close finish for first, second, third.”

    Page engineers his own timing systems, and he said that he designs them “to work on a bad day”—which is clearly what happened Thursday.

    If he times the races next year, Page said he would bring another set of photo beams—and a Leatherman, which he could have used Thursday to loosen a screw that wouldn’t budge.

    But according to Pokorny, the technical delegate, the systems still did their job in the end.

    “It was probably not ideal, but it wasn’t a disaster, either,” he said. “That’s why you have backup.”

  • La Nina – Does it Affect Grinds and Skis?

    La Nina – Does it Affect Grinds and Skis?

    SEATTLE, Wash. – The La Nina winter forecast is widely welcomed by skiers of all stripes in the northwest, as the weather pattern generally dumps generous amounts of snow on the region. Last season featured an El Nino weather pattern, with the drab conditions that typically produces: less precipitation, unusually warm conditions with rain at elevations that generally are on the snow side of the freezing mark, and overall a shorter ski season.

    Mark Waechter's grinding machine. Photo: Inge Scheve

    Mark Waechter of Nordic Ultratune in Winthrop, Wash., tries to make sure skiers don’t base their choice of grinds for this season based on what they saw last season.

    “People want to grind based on what they saw last season, which was warm and wet and not much snow, and that’s not necessarily the right plan. You should grind for what you expect, and this year, we should expect more normal conditions,” Waechter said.

    But regardless of season, you need to cover all your bases – literally speaking.

    “You can’t just have five different cold grinds and nothing for warm. I try to suggest reasonable choices,” he explained.

    Typically, the conditions in the central Northwest will be cold, dry snow that doesn’t see a lot of transformation until things warm up in February, Waechter said.

    For the beginning of the season, he finds that fine dry-snow grinds are faster. Then for the last half of the season, he suggests a warmer grind that handles more transformed snow.

    “If people have two pairs of skate skis, I’d suggest a S2 grind that’s cold and dry, and a D5 for warmer, wetter new snow and snow that has been transformed,” he said, adding that both of these have broad ranges and will work in a wide variety of temperatures.

    Experience is Key

    Zach Caldwell at Boulder Nordic Sports is more cautious about using the long-term weather forecast to guide his grinding choices.

    Caldwell was a part of the U.S. wax team during the 2010 Olympics in Whistler, where snow conditions are notoriously tricky. He spent two years prior to the Games analyzing the snow in Callahan Valley, and can only conclude that it’s a moving target.

    “It’s tempting to want to look ahead. Given the conditions at the Olympics we saw everything of weather, but overall it was warmer,” Caldwell pointed out.

    “I’ve never seen anyone be able to predict a whole season. I’d say the best bet is to trust the past more than the future. You know what the prevailing conditions are in your area, and that is not going to change dramatically, but maybe the center of the bell curve might skew a little in one direction compared to an average season,” Caldwell said.

    Caldwell explained that the bigger climatic changes take longer to develop than from one season to the other.

    “The snow that falls out of the sky isn’t going to be very different from what you normally see,” he said, noting that all of the regions have their characteristics, which in the big picture are going to remain the same.

    “The northwest is always the most volatile and also with the skiable venues so close to the snow/rain threshold, these differences play a bigger role. In the Upper Midwest, the weather patterns are formed by arctic airstreams and whether they are one or two degrees colder or warmer than normal just means you’ll freeze seven fingers instead of eight,” Caldwell explained.

    Focus on Skis

    So if La Nina doesn’t affect the choice of grinds and flexes that much, what does matter?

    “Having good skis is the number one most important part. Then you want a broad-range structure that can handle changing weather conditions. You don’t want to pigeon-hole yourself into a very narrow range,” said Caldwell, noting that a good pair of both wet and dry skis is more important than a specific grind.

    That said, Caldwell explained that in North America, the plus-models of the skis and finer grinds seem to work best. “That’s probably because we have less aggressive snow crystals here than in many places in Europe and especially Scandinavia,” he concluded.

    A longer season is a benefit for developing skiers. Photo: Inge Scheve

    Weather is a Gift for Skiers

    However, there is no doubt that a typical La Nina weather pattern is a bonus for Northwest skiers. Brenna Warburton, a coach with the Bend Endurance Academy in Bend, Ore., pointed out that La Nina is a Christmas present that comes early and stays late.

    That is particularly beneficial for new skiers.

    “We’ll probably be able to ski earlier, which is great, especially for the younger kids and skiers at the development level,” she said.

    “They get more time on snow, and at the development level, the more time on snow the better. That time would be replaced by dryland training, which is also great, but snow time is better,” Warburton explained, adding that they will also be able to ski longer at lower elevations.

  • How to Fit Atomic Race Skis

    How to Fit Atomic Race Skis

    Rick Halling is the Nordic Director for Atomic USA

    Two things are going on when a ski shop measures the flex of a race ski for a customer.   One, they are looking at the stiffness of the ski and making sure it is the right flex for the weight and ability of that customer.  Two, the shop is making a final “quality control” inspection to make sure the customer is getting a ski of the highest quality.  It doesn’t matter if the shop is using the traditional paper test or if the shop has a very sophisticated high tech flex tester, they are looking for fit and quality.  Last year Atomic spent over $400,000 on a new flex testing machine to help our dealers with this process.

    This machine slides up and down the ski. No need for feeler gauges!!

    We have two goals with this new equipment.  The first is to make sure that every ski sent to dealers worldwide has a flawless flex pattern.  We want to make sure that Atomic race skis at any given dealer are of the same quality as the skis that Billy Demong used to win Olympic Gold.  The second goal is to make it as easy as possible for ski shops to provide a perfect fit for their customers.  We have come up with a new sticker (pictured below) we place on the Worldcup skis that provides all the flex information a consumer would need for a perfect fit.  We provide formulas dealers can use to take the data on the sticker and use them for fitting the customer.   With minimal training, any authorized Atomic dealer should be able to provide a perfect fit.

    The sticker

    All Worldcup Skate and Classic skis will come with the sticker pictured above.  This particular sticker is for a 206 Classic Cold Medium.  The first thing we do is place 35 kilos of weight on the Load Point of the ski which is 2cm behind the balance point.  We place different amounts of weight on different lengths of skis.  The amount of weight we put on the ski is referred to as “Kilo Force” and this particular ski has a Kilo Force of 35 kilos.  We use different weights for different lengths and our shorter length skis can be as low as 25 kilos.  You will notice the first number to the left and below the picture of the ski is -35.0 with L1 under it.  This means that with 35 kilos of weight on the ski, it is a distance of exactly 35.0cm from the balance point to the point at the front of the ski that is .2mm above the surface.    The second number to the right is 30.0 with L2 under it.  This means you will go backward exactly 30.0cm from the balance point on this ski until you reach a point behind the balance point that is .2mm above the surface.  We do this for two reasons.  One, this makes sure that both skis within a given pair are perfectly matched.  And two, we have established distances fore and aft from the balance point that we want each model and each length of ski to meet when it comes to being .2mm above the surface.  This is a very effective way to measure quality control and to make sure the skis have the desired flex.

    You will notice the next row of numbers begins with 40.0kg over MF.  The MF stands for Mid Flex.  This means at 40.0 kilos of weight this particular ski is .2mm from bottoming out.  The formulas described below use this number for determining the right skier weight for each individual skier.   We use this measurement as the primary basis for fitting skiers and we also use it to make sure that both skis within a given pair have identical flexes.

    The next number to the right, in this case 24.00mm, is the VSP height and it refers to how high the ski is when unweighted.  This might seem unnecessary, but it is actually a very good measure of quality control.  Any variations of more than five one hundredths of a millimeter within a pair are considered unacceptable.

    The bottom number on the right is the L3.  This tells us how far you have to go from the balance point to reach the highest point of the ski.  We have set standards on how far in front of the balance point every ski, ranging from 172cm skate skis to 206 classic skis, should go.

    The final number in the lower right hand corner is how high the ski rests  above the surface with that length’s Kilo Force of pressure.  This amount of pressure is changed for each length of ski.  This gives you an idea of how high the ski should be above the surface at half body weight.  This is an important flex number for assuring quality control and for observing how this ski makes the transition for glide to kick zone.

    Now you know what these numbers mean.  We will now give you formulas for skier weight to determine what these numbers should read for individual athletes.  Before we do that, here is a general guide to determine what length you should have to begin with:

    1.  MEN FROM UPPER 140’s (pounds) TO UPPER 160’s: This is probably the single most common body type of racers out there.   These guys should be on 190 Softs for Skating.  If you have a fairly senior customer in this weight range who is much over 60 years old and does not seem especially athletic, then you may want to drop him down a size to a 184 Hard.  For Classic, most of these guys will prefer 201 Softs for Hard Wax, 201 Mediums for Universal, and 201 Hards for Klister.

    2.  WOMEN FROM 140 (pounds) TO THE UPPER 150’s: These women should be on 184 Hards.  Try to discourage these customers from going with 178 Hards.  Even though men who are in the 150’s prefer 190 Softs, it seems almost all women in the 150’s prefer 184 hards.  Women who are much over 160 pounds and getting close to  6 ft. in height do prefer the 190 Softs.  Keep in mind that fairly senior women who are much over 60 years old, or less athletic women in this weigh range, prefer dropping down a size, so they may prefer a 178 Hard.  Most women in this weight range like 196 Mediums, or if they are fairly tall, 201 Softs for universal to hard wax Classic skis.  Depending on height and ability they will prefer 196 Hards or 201 Mediums for Klister conditions.

    3.  MEN OVER 170 POUNDS: These guys should be on 190 Hards.   This is one of the most interesting developments we had this past year after extensive testing.  An athlete who is 230 – 240 pounds should not be on a ski that is any stiffer than what works for a guy in the mid 170’s. A stiff skating ski has diminishing returns.  A ski can reach a maximum stiffness, and then it is no longer beneficial to be any stiffer.   This is because a ski is flexing and riding on snow, not pavement or a hard wood floor.  A ski reaches a maximum stiffness for snow (and this includes very hard packed conditions) and the performance decreases if it is too stiff regardless of the weight of the skier.  Classic is easy for these guys.  A 206 Soft will be purely a hard wax ski for them, a 206 Medium can be a good universal flex and a 206 Hard makes for a good Klister flex.  Really big guys will need 206 Hards for all conditions.

    4.  WOMEN FROM MID 120’S UP TO 140 (pounds): Women in this weight range ski best with 184 Softs.  However, women in this weight range who are much under 5’4” will sometimes prefer a very stiff 178 Hard.   The choice of a 178 Hard vs. 184 Soft for shorter women at the lower end of this weight range usually depends on experience and ability, more advance women prefer the 184 Softs.  Men or boys in this weight range are also best on 184 Softs.  These women should go with 191 or 196 Classic skis depending on their ability, height and where they fall in the weight range.  Entry level women at the bottom of this weight range should go with 191 Mediums for hard wax and universal, 191 Hards for Klister.  Advance women at the bottom of this range and women at the top of this range should look at 196 Softs for hard wax, 196 Mediums for Universal and 196 Hards for Klister.  Advance women who are close to 140 pounds may choose 201 Softs for hard wax and 201 Mediums for Klister.

    5.  SKIERS FROM LOW TEENS TO MID 120’S (pounds): Virtually all skiers in this range prefer the 178 hards for skating.  The best classic choice for these skiers are 191 Softs for hard wax, 191 Mediums for Klister.

    5.  SKIERS FROM 105 (pounds) TO MID TEENS: Place these skiers regardless of gendre on 178 Softs.  You may want to put them on 172 Hards if they are much under 5’2”.  For classic these skiers should be on 191 Softs for hard wax and universal, they should be on soft flexing Hards for klister.

    6.  SKIERS FROM THE LOW 90’s TO ABOUT 105: These skiers are best on 172 Hards.  These skiers can be on either 185 Junior Classics or Soft 191’s.

    7.  SKIERS FROM ABOUT 80 TO LOW 90’s (pounds): I recommend 172 Softs for this range of skier.  This size skier can use adult skating skis in 172, but they should be on 185 or 175 Junior Classic skis.

    Those are the basic parameters in fitting skating skis.  You can always drop down a size if the customer seems like he or she is not very athletic and will never ski very aggressively.  It is best to go with a “Hard” and not a “Soft” in any length when you drop down one size.

    FOR SKATING

    Take the skier’s weight in Kilos and divide it in half.  Add 25 and the number on the piece of tape should be within 5 below that number and 5 above that number for 190’s and 184’s.  For the shorter lengths, 172’s and 178’s, you should add 15 to the skiers weight in Kilos after divided in half.  The number on the piece of tape should be within 5 above and 5 below for a universal flex.  The number on the piece of tape should be 5 – 10 below this number for a very soft track only flex.  The number on the piece of tape should be 5 – 10 above this number for a hard track only flex.

    FOR CLASSIC

    KLISTER:  Take the skier’s weight in Kilos and divide it in half.  Add 10 and the number on the piece of tape should be within 5 below that number and 5 above that number  for all lengths of classic skis.

    HARD WAX:  Take the skier’s weight in Kilos and divide it in half.  Add 5 and the number on the piece of tape should be within 5 below that number and 5 above that number for all lengths of classic skis.

    EXAMPLES:

    150 POUND MASTER SKIER LOOKING FOR UNIVERSAL SKATE SKI:  Divide 150 by 2.22 and that gives the skier’s weight in Kilos, this comes to 67.56 and we will round it off to 68.  Now we divide 68 in half which comes to 34.  Add 25 to 34 and you get 59.  This athlete should be on a 190 with the MF number between 54 and 64.

    130 POUND COLLEGE ATHLETE LOOKING FOR HARD WAX CLASSIC SKI:  Divide 130 by 2.22 and that gives the skier’s weight in Kilos, this comes to 58.55 and we will round it off to 59.  Now we divide 59 in half which comes to 24.5 and we will round off to 25.  Add 5 to 25 and you get 30.  This athlete should be on a ski with the MF number between 25 and 35.

    The new flex tester helped Billy Demong win Gold at the Olympics. The same tester and the same formulas are used to put fast skis on every consumer.


  • Changes in Ownership at Langrenn.com

    LILLEHAMMER, NORWAY – Langrenn.com, the Norwegian cross-country skiing website, has gone through a transformation in ownership over the past six months. The site is currently owned by Nilsen Support, which consists of Geir Nilsen and his father, through the company MG Service AS. Longterm majority shareholder and managing editor, Trond Harald Sand, was officially out of the picture as of September 1, 2010, as was reporter Ivar Haugen. For Sand, the exit from Langrenn.com ended an eight-year involvement with the website. Current staff at Langrenn.com includes the owners and reporter Ola Jordheim Halvorsen, who is contracting with the site.

    Geir Nilsen first came into Langrenn.com in mid-2009, when he bought one-third of the company’s stock. Nilsen then bought Sand’s share of the company (just over 40 percent) early in March 2010, and the remaining 25 percent of the stocks from Ivar Haugen and Petter Halvorsen later that month. Langrenn.com was originally established in 1999; Nilsen also owns and operates the orienteering web site www.opn.no, through Nilsen Support.

    Sand still owns the majority of the stock in the Swedish cross-country website www.langd.se, where Kjell Erik Kristiansen owns the rest, and Sand also owns half of the Norwegian biathlon site www.strafferunden.no, which was launched earlier this month. EuroSport TV reporter Ole Kristian Stoltenberg owns the other half of www.strafferunden.no.

  • Rottefella revolution

    Rottefella revolution

    NORWAY – Rottefella has developed a new and lighter nordic binding. The Norwegian biathlon web site strafferunden.no tested and measured the new binding, the Xcelerator, on Tuesday and offers a sneak peak of the new binding more than a week before the official launch on September 30.

    Rottefella Xcelerator. Photo: www.strafferunden.no

    The new Xcelerator is significantly lighter than the predecessors. A pair of the last skate binding weighs 280 grams, while the new Xcelerator only weighs 180 grams. That is noticeably lighter for a sensitive skier’s foot. The new classic binding is also 100 grams lighter, down from 272 grams to 172 grams.

    Rottefella has engineered the new binding with advanced plastics and stainless steel, and only the binding pin that attaches the boot to the binding is metal. In addition to lighter weight, the new binding is also said to increase the power transfer in skating.

    According to Strafferunden.no, the new binding will be available to skiers of all levels, not only for the World Cup tier. However, developing and engineering the new binding, which is 40 percent lighter than the former top models, has been a project with continuous input from the world’s top racers.

    From Strafferunden.no, September 22, 2010 By Ole Kristian Stoltenberg, translation by Inge Scheve

  • Fischer Launches Ski Pole With Zippered Grips

    “We made a few prototypes last winter,” Roger Mohaugen explains, racing manager for Fischer in Norway.

    “The poles are really convenient, particularly for biathlon and pursuit races,” Mohaugen says to Langrenn.com. “Hans Martin Gjerdrem won the 20K biathlon race last winter with these poles,” he adds.

    Mohaugen explains that the poles are developed at Fischer’s facilities in Austria, but that the factory engineers also have taken input from Norwegian racers in the process. For the upcoming season, the poles will be available for retail sales.

    “The poles have been very well received, and we’ve experienced considerable interest,” Mohaugen concludes. See the demo video here.

  • The Golden Skis

    The period from 1989 to 1994 is often referred to as the “golden age” in Norwegian cross-country skiing. During these years, Norwegian skiers hauled home buckets of medals, and the party culminated with the Olympics on home turf in Lillehammer 1994.

    What happened behind the scenes was determining for the results. Terje Olav Seim was one of the wax techs on the support team who groomed and polished up several golden pairs. There is no doubt in his mind as to which pair was his best piece of work.

    “That was the pair Alsgaard used for the 30K at Lillehammer in 1994. I’d argue that this is the race that has logged the fastest ski speed in history,” Seim says to Langrenn.com.  

    – Was that due to the skis?

    “Nah..Thomas would have won no matter what, but he won with such a huge margin. Both the skis and the boy were unbelievable that day. That we hit so dead on with the skis was just icing on the cake for me,” the modest Norwegian says.

    Structure – it matters

    – What was the secret behind the golden skis?

    “For starters, this was a pair with an exceptional base. It can be pretty random which skis happen to have a great base, even the manufacturers don’t fully control that. It was also exceptionally cold that day, and we kept it simple. The structure matters a lot, and what we used that day was a simple, but well-proven and slightly ‘worn’ version. Then we added CH4. That’s what Thomas was skiing on when he became an Olympic gold winner,” Seim recalls. Currenty, Seim works as a consultant for both Madshus and Swix.

    – The Norwegian wax team received a lot of flak during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. What kinds of challenges are they facing with the upcoming World Championships?

    “First off, they have to move on and forget what happened in the past. They need to think simple and develop a system. The skiers don’t need more than one good pair for each different kind of conditions. If they have that and the skis are tuned in a way we know works, the chances of total disaster are severely reduced,” Seim explains. “Oh, and they have to do their homework prior to the major championships.”

    From Langrenn.com, August 30, 2010 By Ola Jordheim Halvorsen, translation by Inge Scheve

  • Van Wijk Grooms His Way to Olympic Glory

    Van Wijk Grooms His Way to Olympic Glory

    Dirk Van Wijk with rake in hand (Photo: Brad Jones)

    While the majority of cross country ski fans last February were plumping pillows on couches, clearing work schedules, and getting Andy Newell’s name embroidered onto a foam finger, Dirk Van Wijk was gearing up to make sure the cross-country race courses met the standards of the best skiers in the world. Van Wijk, as chief of course preparation at Whistler Olympic Park (WOP) during the 2010 Games last February, was the man responsible for battling unpredictable weather to create perfect tracks for both Olympians and Paralympians.

    For Van Wijk, getting tapped as the chief of course preparation was just an outgrowth of his longtime interest in trail grooming. “Even as a young kid, skiing around our home in the Gatineau Hills, I liked nice tracks,” said Van Wijk, in a recent interview with FasterSkier. “I would snowshoe pack and then pull a toboggan with two wooden blocks attached under it.”

    From his days with snowshoes and toboggans, he moved up to using a Bombardier Alpine snowmobile to set tracks at the Nakkertok Ski Club in Cantley, Quebec, just outside of Ottawa, Ontario. In 2003, the Van Wijk family purchased the property on which Nakkertok’s trails are located, and began to improve the existing trail network. Once the club’s volunteer groomer, Dave Mallory, showed Van Wijk how to operate the Piston Bully, his interest in grooming really took off.

    Van Wijk’s summers are usually jam packed with work. He and his wife, Claudia, own and operate two whitewater adventure companies – OWL Rafting and the Madawaska Kanu Centre. However, as those businesses are seasonal, it leaves Van Wijk with a little free time in the winter to pursue other hobbies, such as laying perfect corduroy on the trails at Nakkertok.

    Dirk Van Wijk in the cab of the Piston Bully (Photo: Claudia Van Wijk)

    At the 2008 Canadian National Championships, held at WOP, Van Wijk (attending as a part of the Nakkertok support team) met with event organizers Mike Edwards and Rob Bernhardt. He was told that the Olympic Organizing Committee was looking to put together a team of 10 to 12 groomers for the cross-country venue.

    Subsequently, Van Wijk was selected to help with the International Ski Federation (FIS) cross-country World Cup in January 2009, as well as the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Cup that March. After demonstrating considerable skill, both behind the sticks of a Piston Bully and with logistics, Van Wijk scored his role as chief of course preparation for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

    If you were thinking of volunteering to become an Olympic groomer so that you could stand on the finish line watching Petter Northug Jr. battle Devon Kershaw, you might want to reconsider. Van Wijk assured us that it is no cushy posting. The 12 groomers were split into three shifts, and there was always at least one groomer on-site.

    However, Van Wijk always wanted to be present while the essential and finishing grooming was being done. For nights without precipitation, grooming started at 4 p.m. directly after the conclusion of the last event day. But for nights with snow, rain, sleet, or any other of Whistler’s manifold forms of precipitation in the forecast, the crew would start around 1 a.m. and finish just before the event began.

    In addition, Van Wijk would be on site during the day to help with ongoing trail maintenance, meet with forecasters from Environment Canada to pore over weather projections, discuss the next day’s grooming details with the chief of course and jury, and deal with any mechanical issues.

    Before the Olympics, the grooming crew knew that their greatest challenge would be Whistler’s incredibly unpredictable weather. The team included three veteran machine operators who had been employed at the WOP in the years leading up to the Olympics and had experience with the wide range of conditions the mountain could throw at them. But despite their wealth of accumulated wisdom, Van Wijk still said that there were difficult and tense days, especially “the very warm, soft, and wet snow nights.”

    To tackle the tricky grooming, the course crew was well outfitted with equipment. In use were five machines in three Piston Bully models: the 100, EDGES Trail, and 400. For smaller jobs, a selection of Skandic snowmobiles were available, with Yellowstone roller attachments.

    When conditions deteriorated on those warm, wet, and soft days, Van Wijk broke out his secret weapon: the salting (or, technically, fertilizing) equipment. While the grooming crew had limited experience with salting (it had been used sparingly at Canadian Nationals in 2008, but not the World Cup or IPC World Cup in 2009), Van Wijk said the technique worked “incredibly well!”

    While acquiring large amounts of fertilizer is not recommended due to homeland security concerns, for those wanting to try it at home, groomers spread a combination of ammonium nitrate and/or urea on the WOP courses. “Basically, the salt melts a small amount of snow, which then immediately refreezes by the surrounding snow,” Van Wijk said. “It transformed the snow as if the temperature would have dropped from above to below freezing.” The technique made the snow firmer and faster, and the areas of the course that took the most abuse, like tracks and uphills, survived much longer.

    If the forecast looked like salt would be necessary, at 7:00 a.m., in conjunction with the race jury, the course crew would test the technique on a patch of the warm-up track. If it worked well, they would fan out onto the course, even if it meant having the tracks closed to athletes for an extra hour before the start of the event.

    To spread the salt, the groomers used a few different machines. On the race trails, they used snowmobiles with rear-mounted electric spreaders, and in the stadium they used a ‘Park Monkey’ – essentially a motorized back-pack that spread the salt like a leaf blower.

    The snowmobile-mounted spreader in action. (Photo: Brad Jones)
  • Hunting Down The Golden Pairs

    Hunting Down The Golden Pairs

    Knut Nystad, Norway's waxing czar. Photo, Langrenn.com.

    This week, Norwegian wax techs and Head Wax Coach Knut Nystad are headed for the ski tunnel in Torsby, Sweden, with truckloads of skis and tools to find the optimal combinations.

    “Normally, the national teams have a training camp in the ski tunnel, but this year they don’t. So we decided to have a testing camp here on our own,” Nystad explains to www.langrenn.com.

    Testing and adjusting
    Although it is, as Nystad points out, not a national team camp, several of the national team skiers will be in the tunnel to help the test crew and get their own boards dialed. “We’ll go through all the skis in the current ski pool, as well as test any new skis the racers have received over the summer. In short, we’re doing inventory and fine-tuning the ski pool,” Nystad says.

    Representative sample
    What can the wax team learn from testing in a tunnel?
    “If you stay within the manufacturers’ ‘series,’ you’re fine. In our experience, those test results will correspond to what you’ll find on real snow,” Nystad replies, adding that he has already completed some of the initial testing for the upcoming season.

    “We started the testing at Sognefjellet in June, and we’re on track. We have constant conversations with the skiers and the wax techs. We got off to a good start. Now we need to decide how to continue the project with the racers and the wax crew”

    Continuous process
    There were some changes in the wax crew roster after last season, and the new techs presented some of their tricks to the racers during the national team camps at Sognefjellet.

    “We’ve added a few new faces,” Nystad says. “The new wax team is complete, and there are no changes after what we presented at Sognefjellet. Now we need to make sure we carry a healthy, active dialog between racers and wax techs. That’s a process that pretty much never ends.”

    Positive changes
    During the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, a lot of the communication between the athletes and wax techs was delivered via the media. Especially in the beginning of the Games, when the Norwegian racers had sub-par results, there were a significant number of “ice clumps in the klister,” as Nystad put it. However, missed opportunities in the first few days evened out, and the racers regained their game as the Games went on. So despite the initial trouble, Nystad believes the wax team weathered the storm well and came away a stronger unit.

    “Over time, this was actually a really good experience,” he says. “The media seems to love creating scapegoats, but the relationship between the racers and the wax techs is a team effort. The racers rely on the wax techs, and the wax techs rely on the racers. During the Olympics, there was far too much focus on isolated details. But those are insignificant in the big picture.”

    “Overall, Norway was the top nation in cross-country skiing at the 2010 Olympics. We were also the top cross-country nation during the 2009 and the 2007 World Championships. We hope to continue that record on home turf for the 2011 World Championships this season,” Nystad said.

    Many contenders
    Although Norway’s skiers, coaches and wax techs are all doing their best to succeed in Holmenkollen–and surely have some home turf advantage–there are several contenders.

    “We’ll have a lot of bodies at Holmenkollen and in the surrounding areas this winter who will be testing relentlessly, focusing on the World Championships at home. But there are a lot of racers and wax techs out there all over the world wanting a piece of the podium, so you can’t take anything for granted,” Nystad says.

    These racers will be helping the wax crew in Torsby this week:

    Eirik Myhr Nossum (ski tester for Petter Northug jr.)
    Petter Eliassen
    Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen
    Maiken Caspersen Falla
    Øystein Pettersen
    Anders Gløersen
    Eirik Brandsdal
    Kristian T. Rennemo
    Martin J. Sundby
    Simen Østensen

    From Langrenn.com, August 16, 2010. By Ivar Haugen, translation by Inge Scheve

    Testing skis at Sognefjell. Photo courtesy of Roman Toferer, Atomic.
  • Statistical Analysis: Age/FIS Points Graphs

    Statistical Analysis: Age/FIS Points Graphs

    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.

    This is what I did:

    – Only results since 2001-2002 are used. All FIS scored events that I have are used, not just WC, WSC and OWG races. Personally, I wouldn’t consider mixing races like this advisable, but it’s what the national ranking bodies do for FIS point lists, and I’m just trying to approximate what Grover seemed to be talking about.

    – I cannot guarantee that I have every FIS scored race for every athlete. For instance, I don’t believe that I have each and every American collegiate race that’s been FIS scored. I have some but not all.

    – FIS points are used for both distance and sprint events. Again, this isn’t my ideal way to measure athletes in all cases, but it’s what FIS, USSA, the USST etc. use and it’s what Grover referenced in his article.

    – For both distance and sprint races I created three categories of racers: Podium athletes, USST athletes and “bubble” athletes. Bubble athletes are Cook, Elliott, Gelso, Kuzzy, Southam, Zimmerman, Sargent, Deyong, Mannix, Williams, Brooks, Smyth and Compton for distance and the same for sprint (minus Mannix). I got some advice from people more familiar with the domestic racing scene than myself on who to include; I apologize if I omitted your favorite racer! I didn’t have room for everyone.

    – Podium athletes are further broken down into three categories: less than 5, 5-15 and more than 15 podiums over their career.

    – I plotted FIS points versus age for each group with trend lines for each athlete, where possible. Dots represent a single result by an athlete, blue lines represent trends for a particular athlete. Large outlying FIS points results may not appear in the graph because I zoomed in to show the important stuff more clearly.

    – The USST and Bubble panels are the same within each Distance and Sprint graph. (Eagle eyed viewers might note that this isn’t exactly true; I jittered the ages very slightly to avoid technical issues in fitting trend lines. Specifically, I needed to avoid singular design matrices.)

    – The Podium Athlete panel changes each time based on the <5, 5-15 or >15 category.

    – I omitted the Podium Athlete trend lines in the Sprint graphs because, unlike in the distance case, they were just a tangled mass of spaghetti. This could be due to the newness of sprinting; we might see more definite athlete development patterns emerging after the discipline has been around for some time.

    – Distance event trend lines are obtained using a smooth, but robust method, to limit the impact of small numbers of unusually large or small FIS point values. Due to a general reduction in data size, I was forced to go with simple linear trends in the sprint graphs.

    – I attempted to annotate each trend line for the USST and Bubble panels with the athlete’s name. I apologize if it’s a little hard to read, I did the best I could in a short time frame.

    Finally, a general disclaimer: my purpose in creating this graph was simply that Grover’s comment seemed like a fantastically interesting thing to look at, and I was a bit miffed that it hadn’t occurred to me before.

    Enjoy!

    Click on any of the graphs to view a larger version

    Distance (<5 Podiums)
    Distance (5-15 Podiums)
    Distance (>15 Podiums)
    Sprint (<5 Podiums)
    Sprint (5-15 Podiums)
    Sprint (>15 Podiums)
  • Analysis: Performance and Age

    Analysis: Performance and Age

    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.

    Hilde Pedersen winning the 2009 Marcialonga.

    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.)

    The graph below shows the results for distance events, broken down by gender.  Each point represents the average FIS points for a season by an athlete of the given age at the start of the season. (Ages are somewhat approximate, as I only have access to the year of birth.  This means the actual ages will vary by around +/- 6 months.)  Additionally, I’ve added a trend line to each panel.

    Distance performance by age.

    Several things immediately stand out.  First, there is the general downward trend over time.  Skiers improve over time!  Shocking!  Actually, part of what is going on here is selection bias.  If you’re over the age of 35 and still skiing WCs or OWG races, chances are you’ve proven yourself as an elite competitor.  So at the far right of these plots, we’re primarily seeing the effects of other, slower skiers retiring.  If we allowed these slower skiers to continue racing into their late 30’s it’s likely that both trend lines would start to slope up slightly by age 40.

    More interesting are the differences between the panels representing men and women.  For men, we see steady improvement until around age 30 and then things begin to plateau.  For women, the improvement early (<24) seems slightly slower than for the men, and then suddenly drops down between the ages ~24-28.  From there the downward trend continues, but more slowly.

    Additionally, there appears to be less of an attrition effect for women.  Notice how the pattern of points in the men’s panel steadily narrow like a funnel as we move right, while in the women’s panel even at age 35 there’s still a wide range of performance levels.  It seems that if you’re a man and still racing World Cups past the age of 35, it’s very likely that you are very, very fast, while if you are a woman, it may be possible to continue racing past the age of 35 without being quite such a dominant skier.  Why would this be the case?  I’m not sure.  Perhaps come commenters will enlighten me!

    Let’s move on to sprints.  Using data on sprint racing is more challenging, as we have to contend with three different “results”: FIS points, qualification ranking and final ranking.  Personally, I’m not particularly enamored with FIS points as a way to compare sprint performances and so I’m going to stick with the final round ranking list for each event.  (So if you won the sprint race, you’d be assigned the value 1 and so on.  I may investigate alternate ranking procedures in future articles.)

    Repeating the procedure from above, we get the following graph:

    Sprint performance by age

    Actually, I’ve changed things slightly.  I’ve included seasons with as few as four sprint races rather than five.  That increases the number of data points we have to work with, which is helpful since sprinting hasn’t been around nearly as long and so the data here are more limited.

    First we should note that the five points in the lower right in the women’s panel are certainly having a disproportionately large effect on the trend line.  Without these points, the trend line would likely remain mostly flat through the late 30’s.  Also, I’m not sure how significant the slight upward trend in the men’s panel is.  Again, there isn’t a lot of data there, so I’d read that as “mostly flat” rather than “slightly up”.

    Obviously, things look quite different here.  Gone is the fairly obvious improvement over time (allowing for the outsized impact of the five data points noted above in the women’s panel).  Overall, the trend is much flatter.  I wouldn’t read much into this, since we haven’t had a lot of seasons yet to evaluate the performance trends of sprinters over time.  But it wouldn’t surprise me if sprinting displayed less of a “steady improvement over time” trend that we saw with the distance races, since the conventional wisdom is that sprinting is a young person’s event.  But that’s just speculation…

    One similarity, for the women, is the trend from ages 24-28.  As with the distance events, that seems to be where women make their largest improvements.

    I don’t have a great ending for all this, so instead I’ll just invite you to discuss and comment away…and I’ll close with a trivia question: Can you name the (retired) skier with a FIS results record whose entire name consists of a single letter?

  • Consistency in World Cup Skiing

    Consistency in World Cup Skiing

    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.

    Here are the FIS points for individual distance races in the 03-04 season for Andrei Golovko and the 93-94 season for Jari Raesaenen. Golovko was all over the place and Raesaenen was quite consistent.

    Calculating a standard deviation (SD) of the FIS points is one way to quantify variability. In my example above, Raesaenen had a SD of 7.1 while Golovko’s was 23.6. Clearly I’ve picked some extreme examples here, so we might ask some follow-up questions: How much variation is normal? Are some racers unusually consistent? Are some racers unusually inconsistent?

    Let’s look at these questions using data from the distance events at major international ski races: World Cups (WC), Olympics (OWG) and World Championships (WSC). Here’s a more precise description of what I did and why. If you don’t care for technical details, feel free to skip the rest of this paragraph. For each athlete, I looked for seasons where they had received FIS points of less than 150 in at least nine WC, OWG or WSC races. Why less than 150 FIS points and at least nine races? First, there are some athletes with enormously high FIS point races. These results are going to seriously cloud the issue. (Trivia: care to bet what the highest FIS point score in my database is?) Second, some athletes may only race in 1-2 of these events in a season. That will make a racer look very, very consistent! So I’m trying to weed out things like this that will cloud the data. As it is, nine is small number of points to use for a SD.

    In other words, for each athlete we find seasons where they had at least 9 WC, OWG or WSC races with less than 150 FIS points and then calculate the SD of these results. That’s one data point. Repeat for each athlete and we end up with several hundred SDs.

    What do we get? The average standard deviation is 17.7 FIS points for men and 18.9 FIS points for women. Now, what the heck does this mean? Suppose, through a stunning and miraculous chain of events, I ended up on the World Cup circuit and an average race for me yields ~50 FIS points. If my SD is a “typical” 17.7, I would expect most of my races to fall between ~14 and ~86 FIS points, i.e. two SDs below and two SDs above my average 50 point race. Anything outside of that range would be fairly unusual.

    So a SD of around 18-19 is typical, but just how typical is it? To answer this we’ll consider the following two histograms of all the SDs for men and women respectively:

    These histograms give us a sense of the variation in variability. Confused? That’s ok, here’s the deal. We started out looking at how variable a single athlete’s results are over the course of a season, which we’ll call “within-athlete variation”. The histograms are plots of several hundred examples of within-athlete variation. This gives us a rough sense of just how variable this within-athlete variation might be and helps us to see how typical or unusual different levels of within-athlete variability are. For example, an unusually small amount of variation might correspond to a SD of less than 10, while an unusually large amount of variation might correspond to a SD of at least 28-30.

    Finally, let’s return to Kris Freeman’s comments that I noted above. Has he, in fact, been unusually variable this season? Well, his SD for this season (with only six races) is 54.2. However, that is almost entirely due to one race, the Olympic 30k Pursuit. Removing that one race drops his SD for the season down to 27.1. Still high, but not frighteningly high.

    Has he been getting more inconsistent over time? Here are the SDs for Freeman’s seasons with at least six races:

    Season        Races     SD

    ————— ——— ——

    2002-2003    6        20.6

    2003-2004    16      11.9

    2004-2005    10      32.9

    2005-2006    7        44.2

    2006-2007    11       19.5

    2007-2008    11       24.0

    2008-2009    7        16.8

    2009-2010    6        54.2

    I don’t see much of a pattern there. Is it reasonable to say that Freeman is in contention for being one of the most “volatile” racers on the World Cup circuit this season? Perhaps; but if Freeman is significantly less consistent than other skiers it is certainly almost entirely due to blood sugar issues. As he mentioned in his blog post, maintaining a correct insulin dose is extraordinarily difficult and these doses can change over time. One slip-up can result in a single catastrophically bad race that will make an entire season look very “volatile”.

    And given that Freeman has had several other quite consistent seasons (2003-2004, 2006-2007, 2008-2009) it might be more fair to say that when he’s on top of his blood sugar management he’s as, or perhaps more, consistent than his peers.

    I should also note that the manner in which I’ve examined skier variability so far is fairly crude, as it relies on calculating SDs based upon anywhere from 6-15 values at a time which, as I noted, is fairly sensitive to a single outlying result. An alternative approach would be to employ some heavier artillery and model skiers’ variability over the course of their entire career. I may revisit this topic later to address this, but for the moment you’ll just have to trust me that it doesn’t dramatically alter the picture with respect to Kris Freeman specifically.

    I’ll close with the reminder that skiing consistently is not the same as skiing fast. Go back to my first example and ask yourself which season you’d rather have had, Raesaenen’s or Golovko’s?

  • Ski Switching and Waxing in the 30km Classic

    Whistler, British Columbia – A combination of relatively extreme weather and the ability to switch skis mid-race led to an interesting wax day in the women’s 30km classic.

    Wax techs were kept busy during the races testing skis, while racers were faced with tactical decisions of whether or not to take the time to switch.

    Skiers were allowed to switch up to three times during the race, and could do so only in the “pit” area in the stadium.  Members of service teams could access the pit to remove and return skis.

    During the race athletes communicated with coaches and wax staff on the course letting them know what was going on with their skis.  Support staff passed information the other way, informing the racers that skis were ready in the pit, and what they could expect.

    It rained heavily for the first two-thirds of the race, and the kick of choice seemed to be split between klister, hairies, and zeros.  Racers chose a variety of switching strategies as well.

    Kikkan Randall, USA’s top skier, did not switch skis once.  “My skis were working great.  I had good kick – maybe a little slow in spots, but overall I was pretty happy,” Randall said following the race.

    “I chose not to change my skis during the race.  It was kind of nice to come through the stadium and see people peel off and know I was getting a few second advantage on them.”

    Randall went on klister and opted to stay with good kick over glide.  “They [coaches] kept yelling to me that they had hairies in the box because they were definitely faster, but I had that kick and when my triceps started to go I knew I wanted to have good kick to run up the hills.”

    She seemed to be the exception, however, as most skiers did choose to exchange at least once, and in many cases two or three times.

    Several switched to a new pair, only to find they were not satisfactory, and quickly switched again.

    Evi Sachenbacher Stehle (GER) who finished 4th, switched twice.  “I switched after the second leg [10km], but the skis I changed to was not very good so I changed back after 15km and stayed on those skis.”

    Sachenbacher Stehle raced only on klister.  The pair she skied on between 10 and 15km was “slippery and too slow,” but she was very happy with her other skis, and she was clearly gliding well over the last 5 kilometers when she overtook Kristin Stoermer Steira of Norway.

    Therese Johaug (NOR) had a similar experience, skiing on klister, and switching to skis that were not good – poor kick.  She also went back to her original pair after 5km – though they were surely touched up for both glide and kick by the wax techs.

    “There are really many tactics there.  You are a little bit afraid wondering ‘oh should I switch to new skis or not,’” she told FasterSkier.

    Johaug touches on one of the key elements of the new rules – to switch or not to switch.  Athletes have to weigh their current skis and the time needed to switch against the benefit of new skis, as well as consider what their opponents may be doing.

    Johaug’s teammate Kristin Stoermer Steira took advantage of opponents switching to attack twice.  The first time at 20km when Justyna Kowalczyk (POL), Marit Bjoergen (NOR) and Aino-Kaisa Saarinen (FIN), the eventual podium, all switched, and the second at 25km when Saarinen switched yet again.

    Each time Steira got a gap, and each time she was caught.  She later admitted that her skis were slow on the last lap and she probably should have gone with new skis.   Saarinen did not have great kick on the last lap, but was gliding much better, and easily skied away from the Norwegian on the gradual terrain.  Steira ended up in 8th place despite sitting in 3rd with 5km to go.

    Saarinen took the guesswork out of the whole process by devising a plan ahead of time and sticking to it.

    “Before the race I had already made the decision to switch three times.  It was very wet conditions so the skis were getting slow after few kilometers….I knew it was a little bit risky [to switch with 5km left]…but that was the right thing to do.”

    Saarinen did not consider skipping the final switch despite the fact that she dropped from 4th to 7th and lost contact with Steira.  She noted that a number of the Olympic races have been decided on the last downhill into the stadium, and having fast skis was critical.

    Saarinen lost extra time in the last change when her frozen fingers gave her trouble.  She fumbled with her bindings, and left the pit once only to leave a ski behind – she had to backup and reattach it before starting the chase.

    Despite the issues, she clearly made the right decision as she caught Steira and won the bronze.

    Saarinen also skied the entire race on klister.

    Bjoergen, the silver-medalist, only changed once, at 15km.  “I had very good skis at the beginning, but they were getting slower and slower.  After 15 kilometers I knew I had to change before the end so when Kowalczyk went inside [the pit], I decided to change too.”

    Like Johaug, Sachenbacher Stehle, and Saarinen, Bjoergen raced on klister.

    Holly Brooks (USA) made the switch from klister to hairies.  “They were a lot faster.  I felt like I had pretty good skis the first bit.  The klister was pretty good.  I stayed on it for maybe 10k and there were some girls that switched at either 5k or 10k and all of a sudden they were smoking me on the downhills so I figured it was time to switch.”

    She was glad that she made the decision even though her new skis were a little slick.

    Brooks experienced several different elements of ski switching.  She responded to her opponents – who switched and were faster, and she made the call to first go with new skis, and then stick with what she had, in part so as not to lose contact with those around her.

    “If you are skiing with a pack and they don’t stop, all of a sudden you are skiing by yourself again…There was the potential to switch back to klister, but you never know what you are going to get so I just wanted to go with it.”

    Many skiers in the mixed zone were seen carrying zeros, so they were another option clearly used.

    Ultimately ski switching is a mixed bag.  It creates excitement as the changes mix up the field and build tension.  The ability to get new skis also lessens the chance of someone’s race being ruined by poor wax, since a racer is never more than five kilometers from s fresh pair.

    But on the flip side, wax can become an even bigger factor, and teams with large service staffs have a distinct advantage.  The more people available, the more testing that can be done mid-race, and the more options available.  Skiers also need not just one fast pair of skis selected for the race, but two or three.

    The men will be in a similar position in the final event of the Olympics – the 50km classic.

    Nat Herz contributed reporting.

  • Toko Wax Report and Photos from US Nationals

    Toko Wax Report and Photos from US Nationals

    FAST's Reese Hanneman - a man to watch.
    FAST's Reese Hanneman – a man to watch.

    Waxing today was pretty simple especially as we have some superb glide waxes for the cold. If it is cold, the starting point is LF Moly/Blue mix as a base followed by HF Blue followed by JetStream Blue. This is what we at Toko call “Old Faithful” as it is always fantastic. If the snow is cold and slow, XCold needs to be mixed with the HF Blue. If it is extremely slow, it can be added as its own layer (following the HF Blue). The addition of the XCold makes the skis break away at a slower speed. In other words the skis are slipperier at a slower speed which is very important.

    When making this determination (to add XCold or not), snow and air temperature and humidity are indicators, but not what need to be focused on. If the snow is cold and slow, add XCold. If it is cold and fast, don’t. Keep it simple. You can tell if the snow is slow without a thermometer.

    Here is specifically how the waxes should be applied (mixing the HF Blue and XCold which is what I think was best for today). I am laying this out as this is such a common wax solution and application method and technique do make a difference.

    1. LF Blue/LF Moly mix 1:1. If it is warmer, go with straight LF Moly. This Blue/Moly mix is only for when it is cold. Scrape and brush.

    2. Drip HF Blue on the ski. Shake XCold on top. Melt them in together at about a 1:1 ratio. Some people like to heat in the Blue, shake the XCold over the Blue, and then heat them in together. I think when this is done, the XCold stays on top and never gets into the base. Scrape and brush out well (copper, then horsehair very well).

    3. Rub JetStream Blue on the base aggressively. Rotocork (a recent eBlast addressed rotocorking technique). Brush out with a Nylon Polishing Brush and polish with a Thermo Pad.

    I do not recommend ironing JetStream (or any fluorocarbon) for cold powder conditions unless it is for a long event and then only maybe). Ironing a fluorocarbon when waxing for cold powder snow conditions yields a slower finish than rotocorking it. If all you have to work with is powder, then shake it on the ski and then do a quick iron job (maybe 8 seconds tip to tail with a hot iron), and then rotocork it. This will also yield good skis. (Then brush out with Nylon Polishing and polish with Thermo Pad).

  • Toko JetStream Application and Rotocorking

    Toko JetStream Application and Rotocorking

    JetStream Application

    There are three main application methods for Nordic racing. They are:

    Sprints and races up to 5k

    1. Rub the JS on the ski lightly

    2. Polish with Thermo Pad

    3. Repeat

    Best way

    1. Rub the JS on trying to get as much on as possible

    2. Rotocork

    3. Repeat step 1 right over rotocorked JS

    4. Rotocork

    5. Brush out with nylon polishing brush

    6. Polish with Thermo Pad

    For long races with aggressive snow

    1. Rub the JS on trying to get as much on as possible (Powder is best and easier to get more on)

    2. Iron one good pass tip to tail at 300F taking about 10 seconds tip to tail

    3. Let cool

    4. Rotocork right over ironed JS

    5. Brush out with Nylon Polishing Brush

    6. Polish with Thermo Pad

    Rotocorking

    Technique is critical in rotocorking. There are two general methods. One is to use high rpms and very little pressure. This is what most people do and works pretty well. The cork can skip around a little and it is necessary to go back and forth some which can create lines in the wax.

    I prefer very low rpms (don’t squeeze the trigger all the way) with high pressure and just one pass from tip to tail. It is easier to keep the cork steady and flat and results in a better finish.

    I finished skis this way for 9 National Champions over the past few years (in the events where they won their titles) as well as a large number of people finishing high in other events including winning numerous national marathon series events.

    Rotocorking is easier on the base and is also quick. It is far more economical than applying a fluorocarbon by ironing as more is needed when ironing.

    Toko Mitten

    Product Highlight

    The Toko Mitten is our warmest piece of handware. It offers a plush sleeping bag type of feel due to its fuzzy insert and protective outer layer. The palm material of soft, but extremely durable.

    Toko Gloves

    Toko Glove Features

    All Toko gloves carry an unconditional one year warranty and can be machine washed and dried. They are known for their fit and legendary durability. Pictured is Thermo Plus.

    Garrott Kuzzy

    Visit with Garrott Kuzzy

    Garrott Kuzzy is an athlete that we support with Toko waxes and gloves (along with the rest of his CXC team).  He is currently leading the SuperTour ahead of Steinbock Racing’s Chris Cook (another Toko wax and glove athlete).  We are proud to be associated with Garrott and to contribute to his success.  He’s the nicest guy.  Anybody who might meet him would wish well.  Check out his website at www.garrottkuzzy.com

  • Swix Technical Clinics Head to New England

    Swix Technical Clinics Head to New England

    Swix Sport USA Director of Racing, Kevin Sweeney will be on the East Coast for a week of exceptional waxing clinics. Kevin returns to the East to share with you the most recent knowledge and product updates from Swix. Having recently spent 4 days in Lillehammer, Norway with Swix Racing Service, Swix Wax chemists and product managers, Kevin has some exciting and revolutionary ideas to share with you. Come join Swix Sport for an exceptional evening. This could be Your Winning Margin!

    Click here to download the PDF version of this poster.

    Swix-Clinic_Poster 2009NEv2

  • Swix Technical Clinic 09

    Swix Technical Clinic 09

    Swix Technical Clinic 09

    To download the PDF version of this poster click here.

  • Thoughts on Binding Placement

    Chris Hall is the Fischer USA Nordic Race Director and a former USST Head Wax Tech

    The mounting position of the binding on the ski is an interesting and underdeveloped topic that deserves some attention, given the many changes to ski camber profiles over the years.  To beat everyone to the most obvious and humorous answer, yes the point where the boot connects to the binding should be closest to the tip and the point where the heel of the boot touches the binding should be closest to the tail.  With my attempt at comic relief now out of the way there are other factors that determine and control a proper position of the binding on the ski.  These are listed in order from greatest importance to least importance,

    1.    Snow conditions

    2.    Ski camber profile

    Snow conditions play an overwhelming role in how the ski performs.  As we have all experienced, there are days when the snow conditions are perfect and skiing is virtually effortless, but there are days when the snow conditions are not perfect and skiing does take more effort.  Looking closely at differing snow conditions, hard and compact snow can often provide for fast and effortless skiing.  Ideally, the skier will want a binding position that places him or her on top of the ski, meaning that the skiers weight is placed over the camber profile of the ski.  This will allow the ski to be properly pressured in the tip or shovel of the ski, providing a stable platform.  At the extreme other end of the spectrum, soft and loose snow conditions require a different position on the ski.  In these conditions, the pressure from the tip needs to be released, allowing it to float freely over the snow.  An ideal placement in this circumstance would be for the skier to be slightly behind the point where he or she would be on a ski for hard and compact snow conditions.

    There are a couple ways to achieve this.  One is to have different skis that have different binding positions for different conditions.  A ski for hard and compact snow conditions will be mounted on the balance point of the ski.  Likewise, a ski for soft snow conditions with the correct pressure distribution can be mounted up to 1cm behind the balance point.  Of course, there are always some exceptions to the rule.  When I was with the USST, I can recall a few instances where some athletes had skis mounted up to 2cm behind the balance point of the ski for certain specialized snow conditions.  However, the norm is to keep the binding placement on to slightly behind the balance point.

    For most skiers and racers, multiple pairs of skis with different binding positions are not an option.  Utilizing a ski equipped with the NIS binding system is one simple and easy way to give your single ski “quiver” more versatility in different snow conditions.  Another option is to “split the difference”, mounting the ski around .5cm behind the balance point.  This will allow for some release of tip pressure in softer snows, while still providing enough pressure for harder snow conditions.

    The camber profile of a ski will also play an important role as to where the binding placement will fall on the ski.  Fortunately, the ski engineers who design and build the skis have already done the majority of this work.  Every ski is built with a camber profile, which can be referred to as the curve of the ski.  To see this curve, all one needs to do is to hold a pair of skis on edge and look down the ski from tip to tail.  The shape of a curve will be easy to see.  This curve is engineered so that the optimum placement of the binding will fall on or slightly behind the balance point on this curve.  To place the binding outside of this area will adversely affect the pressures exerted upon the ski during use and will most likely result in poor ski performance.

    For those of you who will be attending the West Yellowstone Ski Festival next week, take the opportunity to demo some new equipment.  Given the vast amount of demo product that will be on hand to try, it is a great opportunity to determine for yourself which factors truly makes big differences in ski performance and which do not.

  • Swix Technical Clinics

    Swix Technical Clinics

    Swix Sport USA Director of Racing, Kevin Sweeney will be in the Midwest for a week of exceptional waxing clinics. Kevin returns to the Midwest to share with you the most recent knowledge and product updates from Swix. Having just spent 4 days in Lillehammer with Swix Racing Service, Swix Wax chemists and product managers , Kevin has some exciting and revolutionary ideas to share with you.

    Come join Swix Sport for an exceptional evening. This could be Your Winning Margin!

    Download the Swix Technical Clinic Poster.

    Swix technical clinic poster 2009