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Biathlon

A comprehensive analysis of The Sophomore Jinx in biathlon

As I have mentioned previously on the Penalty Loop Podcast (, S, G), I generally have lower expectations of any kind of athlete in their second season, especially when they had a strong rookie season. Despite some exceptions, when an athlete transitions from their rookie to their second season, things change. In the first season everything is exciting and new, and there isn’t too much expectation. And even if there is, being a rookie is an acceptable excuse if things don’t work out right away. After season one, the realization starts to kick in that this – in the end-… Read More »A comprehensive analysis of The Sophomore Jinx in biathlon

It’s Crystal, shaped like a Globe. The ultimate goal.

The Crystal Globes are handed out to biathletes who, at the end of the season, have scored the most points in all non-team events combined (Overall), and for each discipline (Sprint, Pursuit, Individual and Mass Start). This post analyses the Globes in the last 25 seasons based on a Trigger request by Kristen K. Globe Winners Over the last 25 seasons, from 1998/99 to 2022/23, we had 50 Overall Globe winners, split between women and men. The visual below shows that nine of those not only won the Overall Globe, but also the four Discipline Globes in that season. Tora… Read More »It’s Crystal, shaped like a Globe. The ultimate goal.

Where Biathlon Nations rank, based on individual race results in the last six seasons

I have to admit this post-season-break had me away from biathlon a little longer than anticipated ( I blame it all on Jordan’s family having a new member in their family!). The good part is that I’m again fully loaded for some new articles and triggers! I started a new project during the season and put it away until the season was over, and it started with the Trigger description: “We know that the Norwegians are a dominant force on the IBU World Cup, but when we look at the number of participants for each rank in the last six… Read More »Where Biathlon Nations rank, based on individual race results in the last six seasons

Trigger request – maintaining performance over a season

A couple of weeks ago, I received a Trigger request from Wyatt: “In general, are older athletes able to maintain performance over the course of a world cup season vs younger athletes who might burn out faster? Gut feel says yes, but what does the data say?” He checked off the boxes for all seasons, but to keep the data manageable I looked at the last three seasons only. And since we’re talking about form during the season, I only included athletes that participated in 17 races, roughly two thirds of all races, in a season. He imagined some kind… Read More »Trigger request – maintaining performance over a season

Puckpossessed Biathlon #7 Canadians

I reviewed the IBU Biathlon data for Canadian performances since the 2000-2001 season and wrote an article. To see the full quality file, download the PDF below. The preview below that is low quality to keep the file a decent size and give an idea what the file looks like. I hope you enjoy.

PuckPossessed Biathlon #6 The Queen of Pursuit

As I’m really liking working in R-Studio, I did my next research in R as well: the Queen of the Pursuit. Unfortunately I am limited to only one season’s data, and a limited season as well. But, as the Dutch saying goes, sometimes you’ve got to row with the oars you got. The full research and R-code can be found on this separate page, and I used another tool I’m quite fond of, Gravit Designer, to create a final result of the research: Here’s the R Notebook including all the code and visuals: I hope you enjoy. Any comments or… Read More »PuckPossessed Biathlon #6 The Queen of Pursuit

Biathlon Course Time Strategy

Looking at the Course Times per Race and Season, I noticed some strong differences in what laps are faster and slower: For example, Oslo starts fast (the course times are shown in seconds, so the lower the value, the faster the ski) but ends really slow, with a significance time difference. Oberhof on the other hand gets faster as the race goes on. Initially I wondered if these trends were influenced by tactics based on weather conditions, but looking a the chart above it is clear the the trends are strongly dependent on the location / stadium / course. I… Read More »Biathlon Course Time Strategy

Puck Possessed Biathlon #1

Alright, finally my first Puck Possessed using Biathlon data. If you are in any way familiar with Biathlon data from the IBU Datacenter you know the pain you have to go through from seeing the data in their great tool to getting it into a data visualization tool like Tableau. So far I have been able to get data for all Women’s Sprint events for seasons 2017-18, 2018-19 and the current season. Although I’m happy that the IBU puts this data out there, it’s unfortunate they don’t do so in a way that would be more user friendly to use… Read More »Puck Possessed Biathlon #1