A few days ago @Realbiathlon posted on Twitter that his database has expanded. It now has almost 4,000 race data files for all three levels: World Cup, IBU Cup and Youth/Junior.
Why should this be important for any Biathlon lover? Well, it allows people to use it for analysis and creating visualizations to help understand things better for all three levels, and not have to start when the athletes reach the pinnacle of biathlon races in the World Cup. What did they do to get there? Were they always this good (or bad)? How long were they in the Youth/Junior level before moving to the IBU Cup and World Cup. And can we learn from what we know to predict future starts from how they perform at the lower levels? That is all in the data now available from RealBiathlon.com.
Yes, I write on his blog and yes, I am a data nerd. And although there is no denying the latter, don’t let the former fool you. I don’t get paid to write on his blog, I do it because I appreciate what he does. And hey, it gives me some exposure. Other than that, no catch. So what I write in this article is just because his work simply is very good, great for the biathlon community, and worth getting a subscription for.
And if you are curious about some of the things you can learn from the data, I encourage you to check out a previous post I wrote about IBU vs World cup data, and a dashboard I created with his data from all three levels starting in 2000-2001. It shows for example how Tiril Eckhoff has gone through the ranks and continuously improved her ski speed in relation to the top 3 in ski speed (per race and per season):
Same for JT Boe:
It also allows us to look at Ondrej Moravec’s career:
All this only scratches the surface of what is possible. So I encourage you to check out RealBiathlon.com and see what you can come up with! (and it has some pretty cool blog posts too! ;o))