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Category: Biathlon News

New biathlon point system

Posted on 2022-12-04 | by real biathlon | Leave a Comment on New biathlon point system

The International Biathlon Union (IBU) introduced a new scoring system for the Biathlon World Cup from this winter onwards: world championships will no longer be included in the World Cup score, no more dropped results and a major adjustment in the points system to increase the value between top results.

It’s arguably the biggest season-to-season change in the history of the sport and not everyone is happy with it.

Old vs. new biathlon point system

Rank Scoring system from
2008–09 to 2021–22
New scoring system from
2022–23
1 60 90
2 54 75
3 48 60
4 43 50
5 40 45
6 38 40
7-40 unchanged unchanged
(mostly) 2 dropped scores no dropped scores
WCH races count WCH no longer count

The IBU points system has always been an outlier compared to pretty much any other scoring system in sports, especially other FIS winter sports, because it greatly undervalued top results. Some people are concerned seasons will be decided too early now, others don’t like the fact that consistency is no longer as important. The fact that no results can be dropped any more has also been criticized by some athletes.

The new biathlon points system is still less extreme than the FIS scoring system or Formula One for example. Interestingly enough, the IBU prize money distribution has always been more top heavy than their scoring system. Let’s take a closer look at how previous seasons would have turned out with the new system.

For last season’s Overall World Cup, the new point system would have had very little effect. The top 3 for both men and women would be unchanged if you apply the rules of the new scoring system. The only World Cup score that would have been flipped is the women’s Mass Start score, which was won by Justine Braisaz-Bouchet, but now would go to Elvira Öberg with the new points system.

Both big crystal globes were won rather decisively, so it is no surprise a different scoring system wouldn’t change the outcome. For last season, there wouldn’t have been much difference in when the title race was over either. Both winners would have been crowned just one race earlier (Quentin Fillon Maillet would have clinched the title in the Otepää sprint, instead of the mass start, Marte Olsbu Røiseland would have won the title three instead of two races before the end of the season).

Things get more interesting for 2019–20. Here both the men’s and the women’s overall winner comes out different. It also gets quite complicated, because aside from the mere points, there’s also dropped results and the difference in world champion races to account for.

For the men, the season actually ended like this: Johannes Thingnes Bø 913, Martin Fourcade 911. With the new system Fourcade would have won 1019 vs. 1001. However, if you still count the world championship results, the outcome flips again, and Bø comes out on top (1286 vs. 1014).

It gets even more extreme on the women’s side. The actual score was very close: Dorothea Wierer 793, Tiril Eckhoff 786. However, using this winter’s scoring system, Eckhoff would have won the title quite easily (956 vs. 737). Mostly because of Wierer’s very strong and Eckhoff’s horrible 2020 WCHs in Antholz; results which would now no longer be included. If you count the championship races, Eckhoff still comes out on top (1039 vs. 1028), but only by 11 points, thanks to her 7 wins that season compared to Wierer’s 4.

Since 2011, five (out of 24) Overall World Cup decisions would have been changed due to the new scoring system (2011: Bø vs. Svendsen, 2014 Berger vs. Mäkäräinen, 2018 Mäkäräinen vs. Kuzmina, plus both winners in 2020 as mentioned above).

It seems that even with the new scoring system, World Cup seasons that were close before will still be close even with the bigger point spread. And for seasons with runaway winners, which we had several on the men’s side during the last decade, the point system doesn’t matter all that much. The biggest change is probably the fact that from now on wins and podiums will be much more important that consistent top 10 results.

Posted in Biathlon News, Statistical analysis

Peak age for biathletes at the World Cup level

Posted on 2022-05-07 | by biathlonanalytics

Introduction

A couple of weeks ago, just as I was finishing up my analysis on the strength of biathlon nations, there was an article* on FasterSkier about Trends in Age and Ski Performance, for cross country skiers on the FIS World Cup. Curious about what this would look like for biathlon, I did some data digging to get race results as well as athlete birthdays to calculate their ages on race day. And then I got distracted and forgot about it. Luckily Matthias Ahrends, a super friendly biathlon coach from Canmore sent me an email about the article and asked if that was something I could look into for biathlon. Yes, I can! And I did.

Trends in Age and Ski Performance: A Second Look by Ella DeWolf and Andrew Siegel

* The original article, Analysis: Performance and Age, was written by Joran Elias, also known as StatisticalSkier

Data

The data for all the used non-team race results (World Cup level, including Olympic Games) and biathletes is from the 2009-2010 season up to and including the 2021-2022 season. This includes 1,102 athletes, 658 races, 47,458 race participants and 5,129 age-athlete combinations varying from 16 to 48 years old. Unfortunately, two athletes’ birthdays are incorrect in the data source (Romana Schrempf and Andreea Mezdrea) leading to incorrect age calculations, so they have been excluded.

The ages of athletes were calculated at the race level, based on their birthdays and the race date.

The biathlon performance is based on points that were calculated for all races, including Olympic ones, based on race rankings according to the current IBU rule book. For pursuit races, I calculated points based on the isolated race results (ignoring start time differences) as that gives a better indicator of performance.

Recent retroactive disqualifications by the IBU excluded the involved athletes from the rankings and moved up all lower-ranked athletes one position in the rankings.

Total points per age per athlete

Following the article, we first look at the total (calculated) points per athlete, one age at a time, which shows at what age athletes score the most points. The ages are shown from left to right, and the points from bottom to top.

We can see in the chart that women scored the highest number of points in the ages just after turning 30. One thing to consider is that typically the more successful athletes may be able to continue their successes a little longer, which could explain why the peak in total points is rather late. As we can see from the confidence band, the confidence of the trendline is lower as we get to higher ages, as it is based on fewer athletes.

The male athletes show a similar pattern, with the peak of most points around the age of 33. These are just the total number of points scored at a certain age for every athlete, not considering the total number of athletes and races in that age group. In case you are wondering about the single, fairly high line on the right of the chart? I call it the OEB effect. Ole Einar Bjørndalen affected the trendline quite substantially, specifically at higher ages.

Average points per athlete per age

The next chart shows the same data as above but averages the points per age per athlete. The darker areas indicate overlapping athlete-age combinations. The peak of the average scores happens around the early 30s again, with slightly higher averages by the women compared to the men. This is possibly caused by the larger number of male athletes, as shown a few charts down.

Number of seasons

Still following the structure of the mentioned cross country skiers article, I looked at the number of seasons the athletes participated in. When looking at this chart, please keep in mind that although it is still useful, it provides an incomplete picture. Although the data starts in the 2009-2010 season, not all athletes represented in the data started their first year in that season. The athletes that were active before the 2009-2010 season will be shown as if they started their first season in 2009-2010. For example, Ole Einar Bjørndalen raced from 1993 until 2018, an incredible 26 seasons. But he will show up in this chart as an athlete with nine seasons (2009-2010 until 2017-2018).

We can see that a large proportion of the dataset only races in a few seasons. The ones that race for ten seasons or more represent about 8.5% of the total dataset.

Stats overview

When combining all points from all athletes per age, we see that women score the most points at age 26, and men at 28.

The highest number of athletes peaks a bit earlier, at age 23 and 24 for women and men.

The average points per athlete per age follow a fairly smooth pattern until age 30, after which the impact of some major athletes disrupts it. Women athletes like Kaisa Makarainen, Andrea Henkel, Olga Zaitseva and Anastasiya Kuzmina still scored a lot of points at age 34, and Ole Einar Bjørndalen still produced 730 points at age 41, and 431 at age 43! Those point totals combined with very few athletes still racing at those ages leads to high point averages per athlete per age.

When we look at the number of races athletes participated in per age, we see a plateau of about 320 races up to age 32, 33 after which they start dropping quite quickly. The sudden uptake amongst the women at age 37 is thanks to athletes like Magdalena Gwizdon, Anna Carin Zidek, Andrea Henkel, Susan Dunklee and Selina Gasparin. Some of the most active men in their 40s are Ole Einar Bjørndalen, Ilmars Bricis, Daniel Mesotitsch, Halvard Hanevold and Oystein Slettemark.

The number of participants per age peaks around 25 and levels off pretty fast after that. When dividing the total points per age by the number of race participants we see quite similar trends to the average-points-per-athlete chart. Ole Einar Bjørndalen and Halvard Hanevold are mostly responsible for the high levels at 40 and up.

Concluding

I think the analysis above confirms the general assumption that biathletes typically perform at their strongest between the early and mid-30s, with some exceptional male athletes still performing at high levels in their 40s. Although that, with all respect to the other athletes, can be mostly contributed to the OEB effect.

Did you like this article, or do you have questions or comments? Please reach out on Twitter!

Posted in Biathlon News, Statistical analysis

Women’s field narrows but men’s stays the same

Posted on 2021-03-26 | by biathlonanalytics | Leave a Comment on Women’s field narrows but men’s stays the same

As a follow up on my previous post, Number of winning athletes doubles in super exciting season, this analysis looks at the narrowing or broadening gap between performances in non-team biathlon races since the 2009-2010 season. Performance, in this case, is measured as the average number of seconds behind the race winner for the 10th, 30th and 60th ranked athletes. So on a seasonal average, how close to the leader are the top 10, top 30 and top 60 in races during the season and how does that compare to previous seasons?

For all charts below, men are on the left, women on the right.

Sprint

For the sprint events, we can see that the men’s field hasn’t changed much over the years and actually has gotten more stable for the top 30 and top 10. For the women, however, we can see the field has narrowed, especially with the “lower” athletes closing in on the top: the top 60 have gone from about 200 seconds back to about 140 seconds back. That’s a minute in just over 10 years! The top 30 and even the top 10 have also come a little closer, meaning the field is compressing and the differences between the fastest and the slowest are getting smaller.

Pursuit

For the pursuit the top 60 was removed as with 60 starters only and always a few DNSs or DNFs there typically is no 60th ranked athlete.

The picture is simular to the Sprint, where the men haven’t realy change much over the years, but the women’s field has significantly narrowed from 0ver 250 seconds behind the leader to about 180 seconds behind, more than a minute for the top 30 to get closer to the lead.

It should be noted that the time behind the lead here includes the time behind the race leader at the start (as per usual in pursuit races), so we’re not using absolute race times here.

Individual & Mass Start

The individual races have seen more fluctuations in the last couple of years for the men, but the gap has remained similar. For the women, again, we see the field closing in by almost a minute-and-a-half by the top60half a minute by the top 30 and about 10 seconds by the top 10. That is quite significant.

Lastly for the mass starts, with only 30 starters and occasionally some athletes not making the finish, we see a small widening of the gap for the men and more or less consistency for the women.

Conclusions

The performance gap for the men has stayed pretty much the same for all events, if anything widening a little for the mass starts. For the women however the gap has declined considerably for all events but mass starts.

An interactive version of the charts can be found here.

Posted in Biathlon News, Statistical analysis | Tagged Seconds behind

Number of winning athletes doubles in super exciting season

Posted on 2021-03-22 | by biathlonanalytics | Leave a Comment on Number of winning athletes doubles in super exciting season

In the 2019-2020 season, there were six men who won one or more biathlon races. Six. No wonder some people called the sport of biathlon predictable. But the current season looked promising when we reached six halfway through the season. And that trend continued right until the end with another new winner in the last weekend in Hofer.

This analysis looks at how many athletes and nations were represented in the winners’ category for both men and women, the top 3, top 10 and top 30 and how it lined up against previous years.

Winners

Last season, all 21 wins were divided between J.T. Boe (10), Fourcade (7), Doll, Fillon Maillet, Jacquelin and Loginov (all one). It was fair to say the winner somewhat predictable. This years’ season however saw 12 winners in 27 events, including the likes of Dale, Desthieux, Hofer, Ponsiluoma, Samuelsson and Laegreid, with the latter winning seven. Perhaps it is unfair to compare 21 to 27 races in a season, but the previous seasons also only saw eight, nine or ten winners in 24, 26, 26 and 25 races respectively.

For the women, unfortunately, the trend has continued to go down, although we did have one additional athlete winning, but again in more races than last year. New winners were Alimbekava, Hauser, Davidova and Tandrevold. But with Eckhoff winning 505 of the races (13 out of 26), getting to nine was still pretty good.

When we look at the different Nations amongst the winners, the trends, in general, are still going downwards or at least are staying fairly low. Although Norwegian dominance is impressive, it would be good for the sport if there were more challengers from different Nations as well. Of the 53 races, Norway won 33 of them. The next Nation on that list was France with eight.

Gold, Silver and Bronze

When looking at all three podium places, we see a similar picture. The men had more athletes than last season, but for both men and women, the long term trend is going downward. The number of Nation represented on the podium has been stable and sits around nine.

Top 10’s and Top 30’s

When we make the pool of athletes even larger by looking at the Top 10 and Top 30 results, we see the male athletes are slightly declining. the women however are fairly stable (Top 30’s) and even increasing somewhat (top 10’s). On the Nations side both men and women are quite stable with Top 10’s between 19 and 14, and Top 30’s around 24.

Athletes and Nations in summary

When looking at athletes and Nations representing the top places in biathlon we see some promising increases for the athletes, but a somewhat concerning image for the Nations. Hopefully we can see in the next couple of years that other Nations like Belarus, Canada, USA, Austria, Switzerland and Check Republic (and China?) can close the gap and challenge typical biathlon Nations Like Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Russia.

If you want to check the charts interactively you can find it on my Tableau Public page.

Posted in Biathlon News, Statistical analysis | Tagged Athletes, Nations, Top performers

Rule changes for the 2020–21 season

Posted on 2020-11-25 | by real biathlon | Leave a Comment on Rule changes for the 2020–21 season

The International Biathlon Union (IBU) announced several rule changes for the upcoming 2020–21 season – for the most part temporary changes to due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is a quick summary.

The one permanent change this winter is the introduction of the dark Blue Bib, which will be worn by the top competitor who has not turned 25 by December 31. The IBU Under 25 Award will be handed out at the end of the season, replacing the IBU Rookie of the Year award. Plans to introduce the experimental Super Sprint event on World Cup level were put on hold.

For the 2020–21 season only, the number of scratch results has been raised up to four for the World Cup Total Score. Scratch results are also introduced to the Nations Cup and Discipline scores as well as the IBU Cup Total Score. In case the total number of competitions are reduced, the number of scratched results will be deducted accordingly:

It’s quite the reversal for the IBU, because the sport had moved away from dropping results in the last two decades. The last time more than two results were dropped for the Overall World Cup Score was 2009–10, the last time four races were eliminated was the 1999–00 season. In Discipline World Cups, there hadn’t been any kind of scratch results since 2009–10 and no multiple scratched races since 1998–99. The Nations Cup had four dropped results until 2009–10, after that none.

Changing the number of dropped results from two to four might seem minor, but it could have a big impact on the outcome of the season. Last year, Tiril Eckhoff would have won the overall title if only 17 of the 21 races counted towards the final score (773 to 753 points); in reality, of course Dorothea Wierer won (793 to 786 points) because just the two lowest scores were eliminated.

The IBU obviously expects athletes to miss or intentionally skip more races this year, which seems reasonable. However, three dropped results for the sprint discipline for example is a lot (30% of an athlete’s results will not count), not to mention it’s quite disproportionate between the disciplines.

Number of races per score, if there are no cancelled events:

On a more technical level, the World Cup Qualification Criteria was adjusted as well, accounting for the late start of the IBU Cup season, which would be the normal route to the World Cup. Accordingly, for the first trimester only, each National Federation can register two athletes who have not fulfilled the qualification criteria. The start quotas for the World Cup remain the same.

You can find the full document about temporary changes here: Special Event and Competition Rules – COVID-19.

Posted in Biathlon News | Tagged 2020–21 season

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