Category: XCFeeds

HELL YES.(Photo stolen from Fasterskier.com)

HELL YES.(Photo stolen from Fasterskier.com)

It’s days like this that I point to when people ask if I can use all my skiing data to predict race results. The simple truth is that nothing does a great job of predicting ski racing results beyond the level of common sense, because you get days like this on a fairly regular basis.

Here’s a look at the top six men (click through for full version):

Clearly these are all good skiers who are generally capable of podium level results, although the Russian, Volzhentsev, is a bit of a new comer and Manificat hasn’t had quite as good a season as last year, in addition to being more known for his skating.

Matti Heikkinen’s effort, fully three standard deviations away from the mean is quite impressive. That’s the 18th 26th most extreme result I have in my database (including men and women). As you might expect, values that extreme often involve a little extra help. Several of those top 26 are by known dopers and several more involved days with strange weather or waxing situations.^<1

It doesn’t take anything away from Heikkinen’s win, but waxing clearly played a major role in the results today. The Swedes, in particular, again apparently had boatloads of trouble.

Stanislav Volzhentsev hasn’t raced much this season, but every FIS race he’s done this season, to my knowledge, has been a classic race. In fact, of the 31 distance results I have on record for him, 16 are classic, 10 are freestyle and 5 are pursuits. So he does seem to be focusing on classic. But being a classic specialist doesn’t necessarily overcome poor skis (which may be what happened to Lukas Bauer, although 7th isn’t too shabby really).

Here’s a version of the same graph that indicated the technique of each race, where ‘FC’ refers to pursuits:

No surprise that Eldar Rønning has a deep and abiding love for classic skiing. Heikkinen’s results are more mixed than I thought they’d be, although maybe I was confusing him with Jauhoärvi, whose better results have indeed been classic.

Related posts:

1. <Drammen 10/15km Classic Recap
2. <WSC Pursuit Recap
3. <WSC Pursuit Recap: North Americans

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned over the past couple weeks it would be this: “Be flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes.”

This lesson has popped up several times over the past two weeks. It all began when we were in Aspen, Colorado. After a week of beautiful sunshine, it began to dump snow the afternoon we were planning to leave for Madison, Wisconsin for our next competition. Later that evening, we were informed that the sprints that were scheduled around the Madison capitol were called off. For obvious reasons, law enforcers pulled the permit to allow cross-country ski racing to occur in the midst of 70,000 protesters! We immediately switched our plans and flew to Minneapolis instead, so we could head to Hayward, Wisconsin to begin our preparations for the Birkie the following weekend.

We enjoyed some great skiing on the pristine groomed trails of the Birkie from Cable to Hayward. Thanks to Dennis Kruse, we had nice and comfortable living conditions! The highlight of the week was visiting a bear den! And YES, there was a bear in it! I was a little hesitant to stick my head in the cave but it was exciting to see the bear in there.

George taking a peek at the bear

After a week of skiing on the birkie trail, eating a lot, and feeling good, I was ready to put the 50k course to the test. The forecast called for chilly weather, and sure enough it was!!! At the start of the race, thermometers read -10 F degrees! eeeekkk!!!! Everyone was bundled from head to toe. Unfortunately, that did not keep people from getting frostbite! The race was going well until my right contact froze and fell out at the 10k mark. While I was a little blind, at least I could see out of one eye:) As the race progressed, the temperatures did not warm up much. And then at the 40k mark, I lost my other contact! Oh great, now i really can’t see! Despite the lack of eyesight, I managed to stay in the lead pack. Once the pace really picked up in the last 3k it was difficult for me to see the trail. Unfortunately, i lost a few seconds in those last few kilometers and just barely missed the podium. I was happy with my 4th place effort. Now, I am recovering from a frostbit eye!

Birkie sprints

After a long couple days of travel, I made it back home! And the lesson I learned of “being flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes” resurfaced again this morning as I was informed that my Grandma passed away. She died a peaceful death at the age of 97! She was an amazing woman and every time I think of her she puts a smile on my face:)

Grandma De Yong and I

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned over the past couple weeks it would be this: “Be flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes.”

This lesson has popped up several times over the past two weeks. It all began when we were in Aspen, Colorado. After a week of beautiful sunshine, it began to dump snow the afternoon we were planning to leave for Madison, Wisconsin for our next competition. Later that evening, we were informed that the sprints that were scheduled around the Madison capitol were called off. For obvious reasons, law enforcers pulled the permit to allow cross-country ski racing to occur in the midst of 70,000 protesters! We immediately switched our plans and flew to Minneapolis instead, so we could head to Hayward, Wisconsin to begin our preparations for the Birkie the following weekend.

We enjoyed some great skiing on the pristine groomed trails of the Birkie from Cable to Hayward. Thanks to Dennis Kruse, we had nice and comfortable living conditions! The highlight of the week was visiting a bear den! And YES, there was a bear in it! I was a little hesitant to stick my head in the cave but it was exciting to see the bear in there.

George taking a peek at the bear

After a week of skiing on the birkie trail, eating a lot, and feeling good, I was ready to put the 50k course to the test. The forecast called for chilly weather, and sure enough it was!!! At the start of the race, thermometers read -10 F degrees! eeeekkk!!!! Everyone was bundled from head to toe. Unfortunately, that did not keep people from getting frostbite! The race was going well until my right contact froze and fell out at the 10k mark. While I was a little blind, at least I could see out of one eye:) As the race progressed, the temperatures did not warm up much. And then at the 40k mark, I lost my other contact! Oh great, now i really can’t see! Despite the lack of eyesight, I managed to stay in the lead pack. Once the pace really picked up in the last 3k it was difficult for me to see the trail. Unfortunately, i lost a few seconds in those last few kilometers and just barely missed the podium. I was happy with my 4th place effort. Now, I am recovering from a frostbit eye!

Birkie sprints

After a long couple days of travel, I made it back home! And the lesson I learned of “being flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes” resurfaced again this morning as I was informed that my Grandma passed away. She died a peaceful death at the age of 97! She was an amazing woman and every time I think of her she puts a smile on my face:)

Grandma De Yong and I

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned over the past couple weeks it would be this: “Be flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes.”

This lesson has popped up several times over the past two weeks. It all began when we were in Aspen, Colorado. After a week of beautiful sunshine, it began to dump snow the afternoon we were planning to leave for Madison, Wisconsin for our next competition. Later that evening, we were informed that the sprints that were scheduled around the Madison capitol were called off. For obvious reasons, law enforcers pulled the permit to allow cross-country ski racing to occur in the midst of 70,000 protesters! We immediately switched our plans and flew to Minneapolis instead, so we could head to Hayward, Wisconsin to begin our preparations for the Birkie the following weekend.

We enjoyed some great skiing on the pristine groomed trails of the Birkie from Cable to Hayward. Thanks to Dennis Kruse, we had nice and comfortable living conditions! The highlight of the week was visiting a bear den! And YES, there was a bear in it! I was a little hesitant to stick my head in the cave but it was exciting to see the bear in there.

George taking a peek at the bear

After a week of skiing on the birkie trail, eating a lot, and feeling good, I was ready to put the 50k course to the test. The forecast called for chilly weather, and sure enough it was!!! At the start of the race, thermometers read -10 F degrees! eeeekkk!!!! Everyone was bundled from head to toe. Unfortunately, that did not keep people from getting frostbite! The race was going well until my right contact froze and fell out at the 10k mark. While I was a little blind, at least I could see out of one eye:) As the race progressed, the temperatures did not warm up much. And then at the 40k mark, I lost my other contact! Oh great, now i really can’t see! Despite the lack of eyesight, I managed to stay in the lead pack. Once the pace really picked up in the last 3k it was difficult for me to see the trail. Unfortunately, i lost a few seconds in those last few kilometers and just barely missed the podium. I was happy with my 4th place effort. Now, I am recovering from a frostbit eye!

Birkie sprints

After a long couple days of travel, I made it back home! And the lesson I learned of “being flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes” resurfaced again this morning as I was informed that my Grandma passed away. She died a peaceful death at the age of 97! She was an amazing woman and every time I think of her she puts a smile on my face:)

Grandma De Yong and I

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned over the past couple weeks it would be this: “Be flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes.”

This lesson has popped up several times over the past two weeks. It all began when we were in Aspen, Colorado. After a week of beautiful sunshine, it began to dump snow the afternoon we were planning to leave for Madison, Wisconsin for our next competition. Later that evening, we were informed that the sprints that were scheduled around the Madison capitol were called off. For obvious reasons, law enforcers pulled the permit to allow cross-country ski racing to occur in the midst of 70,000 protesters! We immediately switched our plans and flew to Minneapolis instead, so we could head to Hayward, Wisconsin to begin our preparations for the Birkie the following weekend.

We enjoyed some great skiing on the pristine groomed trails of the Birkie from Cable to Hayward. Thanks to Dennis Kruse, we had nice and comfortable living conditions! The highlight of the week was visiting a bear den! And YES, there was a bear in it! I was a little hesitant to stick my head in the cave but it was exciting to see the bear in there.

George taking a peek at the bear

After a week of skiing on the birkie trail, eating a lot, and feeling good, I was ready to put the 50k course to the test. The forecast called for chilly weather, and sure enough it was!!! At the start of the race, thermometers read -10 F degrees! eeeekkk!!!! Everyone was bundled from head to toe. Unfortunately, that did not keep people from getting frostbite! The race was going well until my right contact froze and fell out at the 10k mark. While I was a little blind, at least I could see out of one eye:) As the race progressed, the temperatures did not warm up much. And then at the 40k mark, I lost my other contact! Oh great, now i really can’t see! Despite the lack of eyesight, I managed to stay in the lead pack. Once the pace really picked up in the last 3k it was difficult for me to see the trail. Unfortunately, i lost a few seconds in those last few kilometers and just barely missed the podium. I was happy with my 4th place effort. Now, I am recovering from a frostbit eye!

Birkie sprints

After a long couple days of travel, I made it back home! And the lesson I learned of “being flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes” resurfaced again this morning as I was informed that my Grandma passed away. She died a peaceful death at the age of 97! She was an amazing woman and every time I think of her she puts a smile on my face:)

Grandma De Yong and I

I noticed an interesting tidbit in a FasterSkier article the other day previewing today’s men’s 15km classic race. Towards the end, it mentioned that “Bauer also often does better in his first event in a major event.”

Obviously, Bauer had a pretty bad race today, his first of the event, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have a streak going before this. That would be fairly interesting, so I thought I’d look up some data. Prior to this season, Bauer has participated in multiple races at 10 different championship events (WSC or OWG) dating back to 1998.

The following graph shows his results relative to his first race in each event, as measured by finishing place:

If Bauer tended to ski better in his first event in a major championship, we would expect most of the lines to travel above zero (blue line) as we move to the right. Instead, things are quite mixed. There are two instances where Bauer’s second race was much, much worse than his first (2005, 2009 WSC). But overall,there are five cases where Bauer went on to ski better than his first race and five times when he did not.

Just to check, here’s the same graph but instead of using finishing place, using difference in percent back from the median skier (standardized):

This measure yields the identical results (5 times he raced better than his first race, 5 times he didn’t).

Related posts:

1. <Variability In World Cup Ski Racers
2. <Tour de Ski Summary Statistics
3. <Tour de Ski Without The Bonus Seconds

Another strong day for the Finns; lots of big names way down the results sheet today. Sounds like there may have been some waxing issues at play for some of them.

Related posts:

1. <Race Snapshot: TdS Classic Sprint
2. <Race Snapshot: Drammen 10/15km Classic
3. <Drammen 10/15km Classic Recap

Another race, another win for Marit Bjørgen, although Justyna Kowalczyk certainly came pretty close this time. And a dominant showing by the Norwegian and Finnish women in general, as they made up 8 of the top 10. Here’s some perspective on the performances by the top six women (click through for full version):

This measure I’m plotting does a pretty good job of capturing to quality of race efforts relative to a reasonably consistent benchmark, but you can only control how fast you ski. So Kowalczyk, Saarinen and Johaug continue to lay down fairly impressive efforts, both in an absolute sense and relative to their past performance, but Bjørgen just keeps skiing even faster. What can you do?

Saarinen really does seem to be back in form, as that was easily her best race of the season thus far. It’s nice to see Krista Lahteenmaki rebound from her abysmal day on Saturday at the pursuit with a career race. You may recall that Lahteenmaki actually finished 2nd on the second day of the Tour back in January, but this is measuring how fast she skied relative to the median skier and by that measure performance far outpaced that one.

But the award for “race of her life” among the top skiers has to go to Pirjo Muranen. While Lahteenmaki is young and has shown amazing promise this season, Muranen has been racing for quite some time and so has had many more opportunities to have the occasional amazing race. Mostly, she’s just been solid or decent, and this season she hasn’t actually raced all that much on the World Cup circuit, which makes me wonder if she’s had illness or injury issues.

Having four Norwegian women in the top ten isn’t that unusual, but having four Finnish women in the top ten is very rare. I checked women’s results from 1992 onward and I could only find one other major international race (WC, WSC, OWG or TdS) with four Finnish women in the top ten, a 10km TdS pursuit in December 2008. As you might imagine, the Russian women have managed this many times (>100 times, actually, though not often recently) and the Norwegian women have done it 40 times. As far as I can tell, only Germany and Italy have also managed this type of team performance, but not Sweden, interestingly.

As for the North Americans, it was about as good as you could expect:

An average race from Kikkan Randall certainly doesn’t do much to take the sting out of her misfortunes in the sprint race. But both Brooks and Bjornsen had decent races, given that we don’t have much data to compare this to. But in the women’s field, efforts solidly in the ‘Good’ range are good bets to put you in the WC points, even in a regular WC race with a somewhat stronger field. So that’s a good sign from these two.

I’m not sure what the expectations were around the Canadian women, but they all actually skied fairly well, relatively speaking:

Related posts:

1. <Drammen 10/15km Classic Recap
2. <WSC Pursuit Recap
3. <Race Snapshot: WSC Women’s 10k Classic