The off-season has been the perfect opportunity to update the real biathlon database with race data of IBU Cup and Youth/Junior level events of the last two decades. You can now look up all second/third tier race results and statistics that are available in the IBU Datacenter on this website’s race pages – use the “Level” selection to change from “World” to “IBU” and “Y/J” level.
Almost all races since 2001–02 have detailed Loop Times (Course Times, Shooting Times, Range Times, etc.) which are available thanks to the IBU “Competition Analysis” PDF documents. Races since 2016–17 also include split times and target images/shot intervals. Patrons can access all race data through their MongoDB Atlas database access.
The chart shows how the number of World Cup level races evolved over time. From 1958 to 1977 the highest level consisted of mainly World Championship and Olympic races (1-3 per season). The first World Cup season in 1977–78 had a total of 15 events. That number rose to 43 in 1989–90 and 64 per season in 1999–00. Last winter set a new record with a total of 70 events.
Unfortunately, the data for IBU Cups and Junior World Championships is still incomplete. A second-tier competition, then called European Cup, has been held since 1982–83, however, the IBU data only goes back as far as 1998–99; detailed race results before that might be lost.
Junior World Championships exist since 1967, however, the earliest edition with IBU data is the 1997 event in Forni Avoltri (ITA). A detailed list of junior medals winners is available on the German Wikipedia (that page doesn’t cite any sources though).
In total, the real biathlon database currently holds information of 3904 races:
| Races | Races with
Loop Times | Races with
Live Data |
|---|
| Level 1 (World Cup) | 2187 | 1276 | 245 |
| Level 2 (IBU Cup) | 1235 | 1063 | 206 |
| Level 3 (Youth/Junior) | 482 | 391 | 117 |
The next step will be to integrate this new data into all tables and data available on this website, starting with the Athletes data. Right now, you will find nothing if you click on a name of an athlete who has never appeared in a World Cup race. This will probably still take some time, because the overall data size doubled with these new race files and there is no point doing this hastily – it has to be implemented somewhat efficiently in order to quickly update all data after each new race during the season.