Category: XCFeeds

The women’s sprint race on Saturday didn’t see quite as many unusual faces at the top:

Overall, Magdalena Neuner appears to have slipped a bit this season, but she put in an excellent performance on this day. Kaisa Mäkäräinen has really made a jump this year, both in her overall performance level and her shooting. Those two shot clean and were well clear of the field. In fact, they both managed standardized percent back from the median values below -3! Very, very impressive. Neuner’s race is the 8th most extreme that I have on record, men or women.

The US women had just a so-so, it seems:

As you can see, I don’t have many major races (WC, OWG, WBC)  for comparison with Annalies Cook. Sara Studebaker had a decent day, but Haley Johnson and Laura Spector had only OK races; not terrible really, just not as good as they’ve had earlier this season.

Related posts:

1. <Best Young Sprint Skiers: 2009-2010
2. <Otepää Sprint Recap
3. <WSC Freestyle Sprint Recap

That’s right, we’re taking my new biathlon plots out for a spin this week. The World Biathlon Championships kicked off the individual events on Saturday with the sprint. Here’s a look at the top men (click through for full version):

The top panels are plotting the standardized percent back from the median skier (adjusted for differences in race format), with Saturday’s race circled in blue. The blue line tracks the median performance for each season. The bottom panels show each athlete’s shooting statistics for each season.

Arnd Peiffer may not have been on some people’s radar, and indeed this race is noticeably better than what’s ‘typical’ for him this season, Interestingly, the three other good races he’s had this year have also been in sprints, so apparently he really likes the shorter distances.

The American men had, I think, a very strong day, even though they’re probably looking for results better than 26th, 31st, 32nd and 42nd:

What a strong race from Leif Nordgren! In fact, by this measure each of these guys had their best race of the season thus far. The larger than usual field at World’s is probably padding these results somewhat, making them look at least slightly better, but I don’t think we should discount these efforts at all.

In particular, Tim Burke’s shooting still struggled a bit today, with 3 misses, but he’s clearly skiing well.

Related posts:

1. <US Biathlon Preview: Men
2. <New Biathlon Individual Graphs
3. <Drammen 10/15km Classic Recap

Yesterday afternoon we had our opening ceremonies. All of the teams met in the entrance to the skyway and we walked a couple of blocks to our destination. Since we are all staying in the same hotel AND we were able to stay inside and warm, it went smoothly and everyone was happy.
PNSA with their “mascot” up high.
Two by two.
We marched through Macy’s and to our destination the IDC center.
Looking down.
The drummers.
Looking across (as team NE enters).
Looking up.
Alan Page (Minnesota Supreme Court Justice and ex NFL player) addresses the athletes.
There were several short speeches and some entertainment (broomers, tap dancers, drummers).. It was a good mix and a nice ceremony.
We took advantage of the situation to get a team picture.
Today our sprint races start at noon and end under the lights. It will probably be 9:30 pm by the time we get back for dinner and bed. Should be a fun day!

Finally, someone manages to beat Marit Bjørgen. If I’d had to pick who was most likely to pull it off, I actually would have bet on either Justyna Kowalczyk or Therese Johaug. Kowlaczyk is probably the consensus choice, but based on some of the commentary I’ve read so far, I feel like I’m less surprised that it turned out to be Johaug than some others seem to be. Sure, she’s young, but when I look at who in the women’s field has put in some supremely impressive race efforts this season, both Kowalczyk and Johaug have maxed out at roughly the same level. It’s just that Bjørgen has practically lived at that extreme.

Anyway, here’s a look at the top women (click through for full version):

Saturday’s result is highlighted with the blue circled. I’m measuring performance using standardized percent back from the median skier, adjusted slightly for differences between mass start and interval formats.

As you can see, Johaug’s race was the best of her career by a comfortable margin, but she’s clearly approached this level of performance on a few occasions this season. Several people have asked how this ranks overall. By this measure, Johaug’s race was 2.76 standard deviations better than a ‘typical’ percent back from the median. There are only 76 race efforts in major races since 1992 that are better, including men or women.

Now, that might actually seem low to some people, which is understandable. What’s hurting her is (a) the women’s field is actually a little less prone to extreme performances and (b) it happened in a 30k. Even using percent back doesn’t completely remove differences in race length. The reason probably revolves around psychology and race tactics. In long races, once you have a large gap (1-2 minutes) there’s little incentive to try to increase that margin. Similarly, a lot of racers, once their behind by that much, will stop trying to pursue the leader and simply ‘race for second’. In shorter races, which tend to be interval starts, racers have less reliable information about their position, so even if someone is told they were up by 30 seconds in a 10k, with 1k to go, they aren’t as likely to ease up for the remainder. The result is that long races can see big gaps appear, but they aren’t quite as proportionally large as what we see in shorter races.

There are simple ways to remedy this. If we look only at women, Johaug’s race was the 19th best (i.e. most extreme) all time, and if we reduce down to only women’s 30k’s, it’s the 2nd most extreme (losing out to Julia Tchepalova, 3-20-1999). So that’s probably a somewhat better indication of how impressive that race was.

As for the Americans:

Solid races all around, although nothing outside the realm of what we’ve seen from each of them before. I’m very glad that Morgan Arritola finally got a decent result in during the Championships; her season has really been a struggle, it seems. Personally, while I’m happy to see all four Americans in the top 25, I wouldn’t get carried away. Doing it once is great, but as you can see from this graph, we’re a long way from having this kind of day on a regular basis.

For completion, here are the two Canadians:

Related posts:

1. <La Clusaz Recap: Distance Mass Start
2. <WSC Pursuit Recap
3. <WSC Pursuit Recap: North Americans

Some dramatic gaps between the leaders and the field today in both races.

Related posts:

1. <Race Snapshot: IBU WC 1 Men/Women’s Pursuit
2. <Race Snapshot: IBU WC 2 Men’s Pursuit
3. <Race Snapshot: IBU WC 7 Men/Women Pursuit