Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

[Cance > TheRest]

Re:

I think a LOT of pieces need to fall into place for Gregorin to get on the podium these days. I can't be bothered right now to address the other names but I don't think the pool is that big.

Will be interesting to see whether 8/10 would be enough for Herrmann to have a chance to win.

The wind conditions would have to be really terrible for that to happen, I think. If the likes of Koukalova, Mäkäräinen, Habert, Dahlmeier or any of the other fast skiers shoot clean, I really don't see much of a chance for Herrman.

About Gregorin.
This is her "% faster than median skier"-stats from the Östersund races:
Individual 4.643
Sprint 2.93917
Pursuit 1.13972
Surely if her hit rate goes up, so will her chances of a podium. These are quite good skiing stats by any account and a lot better than many regular top 10'ers on the world cup. Ofcourse this could all change with the tougher trails in Pokljuka.

 

[python]

more that half the starters are still to finish, but fourcade can already be congratulated. impressive speed !

i was surprised to see j.boe slowing down on the last lap...almost got caught by shipulin. good to see him gaining form. perfect conditions for shooting, still many missed.

 

[Cance > TheRest]

At least the Norwegians and Shipulin are a lot closer to Fourcade this time. He's not starting the pursuit with a 45 second gap this time.

 

[Kokoso]

Re:

i was surprised to see j.boe slowing down on the last lap

That's often with him I think, so surprise element is in question.

 

[Cance > TheRest]

Re: Re:

i was surprised to see j.boe slowing down on the last lap

That's often with him I think, so surprise element is in question.

JBoe has been slightly sick during the week and was actually adviced by doctors not to to take part in today's competition. Normally he's pretty fast on the last lap.

 

[python]

Re: Re:

JBoe has been slightly sick during the week and was actually adviced by doctors not to to take part in today's competition. Normally he's pretty fast on the last lap.

it's pretty useless to have a discussion with him...

 

[kingjr]

Actually JTB does tend to start strong and then fade a little on the last lap (while still being faster than most), but today he was slower than normal.

 

[Cance > TheRest]

Re:

Actually JTB does tend to start strong and then fade a little on the last lap (while still being faster than most), but today he was slower than normal.

That is mostly in the 20k individual competitions, not so much on shorter distances.

 

[kingjr]

Re: Re:

Actually JTB does tend to start strong and then fade a little on the last lap (while still being faster than most), but today he was slower than normal.

That is mostly in the 20k individual competitions, not so much on shorter distances.

Not much but a little.

 

[Cance > TheRest]

Re: Re:

Actually JTB does tend to start strong and then fade a little on the last lap (while still being faster than most), but today he was slower than normal.

That is mostly in the 20k individual competitions, not so much on shorter distances.

Not much but a little.

I guess it has more to do with Fourcade speeding up on the last lap

 

[roundabout]

1-13-14 course times for each lap today for JTB.

And unsurprisingly, Herrmann was good, but relatively far away from the best on the course today.

 

[kingjr]

Re: Re:

Actually JTB does tend to start strong and then fade a little on the last lap (while still being faster than most), but today he was slower than normal.

That is mostly in the 20k individual competitions, not so much on shorter distances.

Not much but a little.

I guess it has more to do with Fourcade speeding up on the last lap

Nah Fourcade usually goes full gas from the start and generally does a better job keeping it up for the whole race.

 

[BullsFan22]

It's a shame that Fak is sick and has to miss all these WC races, particularly in Slovenia. Hopefully he gets healthy sooner rather than later and gets in shape and races to his potential. He is a great athlete and with him in the mix it livens things up, particularly at the big events, where ups his game.

 

[Kokoso]

Re: Re:

i was surprised to see j.boe slowing down on the last lap

That's often with him I think, so surprise element is in question.

JBoe has been slightly sick during the week and was actually adviced by doctors not to to take part in today's competition. Normally he's pretty fast on the last lap.

Last season he was mostly slower in the second lap than in first lap.

Today he was (massive) 7,5 seconds faster on the first lap then second one (that's rather unusual, isn't it?) and lost 8,1 seconds on the second lap, so maybe he just overdid first lap?

 

[Cance > TheRest]

Re: Re:

Actually JTB does tend to start strong and then fade a little on the last lap (while still being faster than most), but today he was slower than normal.

That is mostly in the 20k individual competitions, not so much on shorter distances.

Not much but a little.

I guess it has more to do with Fourcade speeding up on the last lap

Nah Fourcade usually goes full gas from the start and generally does a better job keeping it up for the whole race.

It is my experience from analyzing his course times, that Fourcade goes progressively faster in terms of rank per loop. Whether that's due to the other athletes fading or Fourcade speeding up can ofcourse vary from race to race.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

So, Herrmann was 5th fastest (behind Mäkäräinen, whose XC prowess is well known and has some solid World Cup and World Championships outings in XC, Aymonier, who is also a converted XC skier, Braisaz, who's a 20-year-old future star who's been on the World Cup despite her youth for over two years, and Dahlmeier, who's the current overall World Cup leader). What bodes well for her, however, is that she didn't lose as much time in the range as I expected. A lot of converted XC skiers can often be quite slow shots. It was always a problem for Sachenbacher-Stehle, and Aymonier last year would ski hard but then shoot quite slowly afterward so that she would lose time in the range even when she hit all 5. I mean, Denise was hardly shooting at the speed you might expect from, say, Dorothea Wierer, but she lost less time there than I thought she would.

However, we did also learn whereabouts she would be with 8/10 as discussed above. The other thing that's worth consideration is that in converting to biathlon, it's quite likely that the larger part of Herrmann's training for the switch will have been on shooting; she's been a strong skier for years, otherwise she wouldn't have been where she was on the World Cup circuit. As a result, she won't have had so much work to do on her skiing (although obviously she will no longer have needed to train in Classic too) which may impact the times she puts in now compared to as a specialist XC skier, until she gets into her groove skiing with the rifle on her back.

 

[kingjr]

Re: Re:

It is my experience from analyzing his course times, that Fourcade goes progressively faster in terms of rank per loop. Whether that's due to the other athletes fading or Fourcade speeding up can ofcourse vary from race to race.

My experience is different

 

[portugal11]

Fourcade is just too strong for these norwegians. He could win more than 15 races this season.
Why bjordalen is 42 years old i would love to see a bjordalen vs Fourcade at their prime

 

[meat puppet]

Also Pokljuka is at altitude, and the competitors came to race mostly without acclimatisation. My guess would be that whereas JTB started fast, went very lactic early on and paid the price on 2nd and 3rd laps, fourcade decided to take it a bit easier on the first lap so as to avoid this.

Mäkäräinen had the same tactic, btw.

 

[Kokoso]

Re:

Why bjordalen is 42 years old

I think second performance peak in late thirties is quite enough for everybody. If he hit third performance peak in his fourties...well...

 

[Singer01]

Re:

Fourcade is just too strong for these norwegians. He could win more than 15 races this season.
Why bjordalen is 42 years old i would love to see a bjordalen vs Fourcade at their prime

if JTB was ill this week then his performance was more impressive than Fourcade, however i think he is the only one who can compete, and obviously lacks Fourcade's consistency.
At their best OEB wins hands down for me, he was clearly a much faster skier, when Fourcade has entered XC races he hasn't pulled up any trees, OEB was clearly a great XC skier as well.

 

[python]

today in davos. 15k skate TT and men 30k skate TT.

dont miss it. starts at 11:15 cet women and 14:30 cet men. eurosport, nrk and svt will stream it. probably subject to geo-restriction.

ladies start list
http://medias1.fis-ski.com/pdf/2017/CC/3590/2017CC3590SL.pdf
mens start list
http://medias1.fis-ski.com/pdf/2017/CC/3591/2017CC3591SL.pdf

will NOT start: halfvarsson, bjoergen, ustiogov, olsson, northug, niskanen-bro, kalla...
BUT a couple of interesting relatively new names (chervotkin, a real talent, melnichenko) will start. also a veteran di centa, kikkan randall (her 1st race this season iirc)...

i will bet on heidi, parmakoski chekaleva and niskanen-sis for the ladies and manificat, hellner, heikkinen, gloersen for the men. dont see cologna, or legkov or vyleg among on the podium.

still the probability is that sundby should win. will be glad to see him beaten.
---
fixed the start times

 

[Kokoso]

Re: Re:

At their best OEB wins hands down for me, he was clearly a much faster skier, when Fourcade has entered XC races he hasn't pulled up any trees, OEB was clearly a great XC skier as well.

I don't think you can compare skiing of them based on resulst in xc races. First of all I think it's really difficult to compare different eras in sport as all results are relative. Fourcade is racing in different era than OEB was; interesting is that since time OEB got much worse from season to season (from 1st overall to 10th overall) he stopped entering xc races at all. At that time Fourcade was yet to enter them. Another factor is we don't know how serious they were in each race - it is not their main sport os likely motivation can vary much more. Another factor are conditions in each race, without their knowledge it's impossible to compare.
Fourcade only took part in races before start of the biathlon season so he wasn't in his best shape. Regarding Bjoerndalen, I don't think anyone can take seriously EPO influenced years. Bjoerndalen entered much more races too, so his chance to succed statisticaly increases and given Bjoerndalen has his share of not very good results, like 40th, 23rd, or 18th place, that probably factor plays a role. Also OEB didn't exactly make a hole to the xc skiing world cup, he was 1st once, but most of his result in world cup are much worse. And, I think it's hard to take seriuosly EPO influenced years. Fourcade's results in world cup don't look very well, but than again he only entered two races and postion can be misleading, because he didn't have big time loss. Bjoerndalen's first two starts at world cup weren't exactly ground breaking, too.

 

[portugal11]

Another easy victory by fourcade. He is easily two steps above everyone. He will surpass OEB one day.

 

[Kokoso]

Re:

He will surpass OEB one day.

He's arguably better than OEB ever was, but I doubt he will surpass him in terms of number of medals and victories.