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Category: Website updates

New feature: Complete IBU Cup & Junior level data

Posted on 2021-09-29 | by real biathlon | Leave a Comment on New feature: Complete IBU Cup & Junior level data

The website already offered data for single races of below World Cup level events (IBU Cups, European Championships, IBU Junior Cups, Youth/Junior World Championships). Now you can also search for aggregated shooting and skiing data of IBU Cup seasons or junior level seasons, as well as updated athlete data, which includes all lower level IBU events.

The athletes, teams, races and seasons pages have been updated with a “Level” selection (sidebar) that allows you to switch between categories (competition levels: World Cup level, IBU Cup level, Junior level). For example: junior level races of last season.

The real biathlon database now includes the same seasonal data for IBU Cup seasons and junior seasons as it’s already available for all World Cup seasons. Below I listed the men’s performance scores for the 2020–21 IBU Cup. Interestingly, the scores for top IBU Cup athletes seem to be much closer to the mean (roughly one standard deviation better) than your average World Cup winner (-1.2 to -1.4) at the top international level.

Top overall performance scores | 2020–21 IBU Cup Men

NoFamily NameGiven NameNationRacesRank
(avg)
Ski Speed
Score
Hit Rate
Score
Range Time
Score
Total
Performance
Score
NoFamily NameGiven NameNationRacesRank
(avg)
Ski Speed
Score
Hit Rate
Score
Range Time
Score
Total
Performance
Score
1BakkenSivert GuttormNOR
159.5-0.84-1.22-1.57-1.04
2KhaliliSaid KarimullaRUS
66.3-0.84-1.66-0.36-1.02
3CappellariDanieleITA
1521.2-0.44-1.73-1.85-0.99
4AndersenFilip FjeldNOR
158.7-1.00-0.93-0.87-0.96
5AndersenAleksander FjeldNOR
1510.5-0.89-0.97-1.24-0.95
6StroemsheimEndreNOR
1212.2-0.92-0.69-1.50-0.93
7NawrathPhilippGER
1510.7-1.07-0.76-0.32-0.89
8TsymbalBogdanUKR
720.1-0.79-0.98-0.94-0.86
9StrelowJustusGER
1520.6-0.65-1.22-0.98-0.85
10PorshnevNikitaRUS
1418.4-0.62-1.44-0.52-0.84

The new data also allows you to compare athletes at different competition levels. Below you can see a comparison of junior level race results for Dzinara Alimbekava and Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold. Even though Tandrevold was by far the better junior (winning 5 individual youth/junior world championship medals), Alimbekava took last season’s first ever Under-25 score (blue bib), beating Tandrevold by 27 points.

Other useful additions include tables for Youth/Junior World Championships medals for all athletes, the possibility to compare season data for athletes at different levels (who is shooting better/worse at World Cup level?) and complete results lists (particularly useful for athletes that often change between World Cup and lower levels),

Posted in Website updates | Tagged Data

New database search function

Posted on 2021-07-18 | by real biathlon | Leave a Comment on New database search function

I have been working on a new feature that allows to search the real biathlon database for all-time records, seasonal data/records or specific data subsets. You can search three separate categories: among all single races, aggregated seasonal data, and career statistics. I implemented a new web interface available in the Patreon section for more complex database searches that allows combined queries for multiple values/ranges.

Below are a few examples of possible queries:

Since 2001–02, there have been only 3 races in which an athlete topped all major stats (rank, ski rank, hit rate, shooting time): all these “perfect” races where done by Ole Einar Bjørndalen between 2001 and 2005. There hasn’t been a single race like this on the women’s side.

“Perfect” races, all time

NoFamily NameGiven NameNationDateLevelPlaceDisciplineRankSki RankTotal PercentShooting Time Rank
NoFamily NameGiven NameNationDateLevelPlaceDisciplineRankSki RankTotal PercentShooting Time Rank
1BjoerndalenOle EinarNOR
2001-12-06WCHochfilzenSP111001
2BjoerndalenOle EinarNOR
2004-12-11WCOslo HolmenkollenSP111001
3BjoerndalenOle EinarNOR
2005-01-23WCAntholz-AnterselvaPU111001
4BjoerndalenOle EinarNOR
2005-02-20WCPokljukaMS121002
5EberhardJulianAUT
2017-03-03WCPyeongChangSP121001

Who was the fastest skier ever? That’s difficult to answer, because results will always differ depending on your criteria. But the list of the top female skiers (per season) in terms of percent back from top 10 median isn’t a bad benchmark.

Kaisa Mäkäräinen, Magdalena Neuner and Darya Domracheva had 3 seasons each skiing at least 1.6% faster than the top 10 median. Interestingly, all seasons are from at least 6 years ago. Either the depth of the women’s field has increased a lot in just a couple of years, or there aren’t as many all-time great skiers in today’s field.

Fastest skiers (top 10 median back) | Women’s seasons

NoFamily NameGiven NameNationRacesSeason IdDisciplineYearSkiing Top 10 Median BackSki RankSpeed
NoFamily NameGiven NameNationRacesSeason IdDisciplineYearSkiing Top 10 Median BackSki RankSpeed
1MakarainenKaisaFIN
251415NonTeam2015-2.6382.423.01
2NeunerMagdalenaGER
250708NonTeam2008-2.5021.3222.255
3DomrachevaDaryaBLR
261112NonTeam2012-2.4542.34622.385
4DomrachevaDaryaBLR
251415NonTeam2015-2.0642.12522.852
5ZidekAnna CarinSWE
230506NonTeam2006-1.9992.43521.226
6DomrachevaDaryaBLR
241314NonTeam2014-1.891.91722.472
7NeunerMagdalenaGER
251112NonTeam2012-1.822.7222.261
8NeunerMagdalenaGER
211011NonTeam2011-1.7741.95222.14
9MakarainenKaisaFIN
261213NonTeam2013-1.7362.69222.404
10MakarainenKaisaFIN
261112NonTeam2012-1.7352.61522.211
11GoessnerMiriamGER
241213NonTeam2013-1.64.08322.375

Below are the fastest female shooters – average of all career shooting times (at least 10 races). Unsurprisingly, that list is dominated by current athletes, as shooting speed have increased considerably over the last decade. Julia Simon tops this ranking with a average 25.5s shooting time in her 80 career races to date.

Fastest shooters (below 27 sec) | Women’s career data

NoFamily NameGiven NameNationFirst YearLast YearRacesDisciplineTotal Shooting TimeTotal PercentRaces
NoFamily NameGiven NameNationFirst YearLast YearRacesDisciplineTotal Shooting TimeTotal PercentRaces
1SimonJuliaFRA
2017202180NonTeam25.47877.85780
2CadurischIreneSUI
2012202168NonTeam25.88879.04468
3KummerLuiseGER
2014201622NonTeam26.3587.04522
4MerkushynaAnastasiyaUKR
2015202176NonTeam26.51584.73776
5BankesMeganCAN
2017202143NonTeam26.62974.3943
6WiererDorotheaITA
20092021238NonTeam26.71985.506238
7GhilenkoAllaMDA
2017202136NonTeam26.82479.54536
8PojeUrskaSLO
2014202036NonTeam26.86884.58336

Posted in Website updates | Tagged Data

Major database update

Posted on 2021-06-06 | by real biathlon | Leave a Comment on Major database update

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:

RacesRaces with
Loop Times
Races with
Live Data
Level 1 (World Cup)21871276245
Level 2 (IBU Cup)12351063206
Level 3 (Youth/Junior)482391117

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.

Posted in Website updates | Tagged Data

Latest website features

Posted on 2021-04-16 | by real biathlon | Leave a Comment on Latest website features

With the season behind us, I thought it would be a good idea to summarize the updates and new features I added to the website over the last 2-3 months. Most of them are a little hidden and not everyone will immediately see them or even be aware they are available. It’s probably useful to give a quick overview.

Histograms

I added histograms for all athlete and team pages (which previously only had line chart or box plot visualizations). I think it’s an interesting addition, particularly for shooting percentages, or to give a better overview of shooting pace and skiing speed distributions. Just like line charts, you can directly compare two athletes.

A histogram is an approximate representation of the distribution of numerical data. In a histogram, each bar groups numbers into ranges. Taller bars show that more data falls in that range. A histogram displays the shape and spread of continuous sample data.

Examples:

  • Shooting percentage distribution 2020–21: Sturla Holm Lægreid
  • Ski speed comparison: Hanna Öberg vs. Tiril Eckhoff

Ski Speed per Loop

Some athletes seem to get faster over the course of a race, while others appear to tire more quickly than the field. To quantify this a little better and find out who has particularly strong final laps, I calculated the ski speed (back from top 30 median) for each of the 3/5 ski loops. You can visualize them either as box plots or line charts (for overall career, per season, per discipline, etc).

Examples:

  • Box Plots for each Ski Loop: Dorothea Wierer
  • Box plots for Teams: Austria Mixed

Examples:

  • Line charts per Race: Comparison Dorothea Wierer vs. Hanna Öberg
  • Line chart per Season: Johannes Thingnes Bø

Head-to-head comparison

For all races, you can now compare two athletes directly. All time data (course times, shooting times, range times, etc.) is visualized through a diverging bar chart, while some other data (shooting intervals, hits/misses) are shown side by side in a table.

Examples:

  • Head-to-head comparison: Johannes Thingnes Bø vs. Sturla Holm Lægreid
  • Head-to-head team comparison: Norway vs. Germany

Video links

All race pages (since 2010–11) now have direct links to the Eurovision Sports website which hosts the official IBU videos. If available, the links usual include race replay, press conference, highlights and zeroing. For Olympic races, I linked videos from Olympic.org.

Bonus content for patrons

  • New data set of World Cup prize money: For all seasons since 2003–04, as well as cumulative all-time biathlon prize money data (since 2004).
  • Improved Comparison page: You can now compare stats not only season-to-season, but also by World Cup trimesters within a season. For example: This season’s ski speed changes January to March
  • Stats for each World Cup venue: You can look up all podium finishers, shooting results, shooting times and skiing stats for each World Cup location. I also added weather info for each race. Most data can be visualized.
Posted in Website updates | Tagged Data subscription, data visualization

New features: box plots and course profiles

Posted on 2020-12-10 | by real biathlon | Leave a Comment on New features: box plots and course profiles

I made a few updates to the site, adding box plots to athlete and team stats pages, course profiles for all World Cup 3.3 km loops and an explanation page for the most used stats (courses and explanations can be found in the navigation bar ▷ More).

The box plot allows quick graphical examination of one or more data sets and is useful for comparing distributions between several groups or sets of data. Mathematically speaking, it offers a more robust measure than a single value, which is otherwise used on this site. A box plot is a standardized way of displaying a data set based on a five-number summary: minimum, lower quartile (Q1), median, upper quartile (Q3) and maximum. The box is drawn from Q1 to Q3 with a horizontal line drawn in the middle to denote the median.

The distance between the upper and lower quartiles is known as the Interquartile range (IQR). From above the upper quartile, a distance of 1.5 times the IQR is measured out and a whisker is drawn up to the largest observed point from the dataset that falls within this distance. Similarly, a distance of 1.5 times the IQR is measured out below the lower quartile and a whisker is drawn up to the lower observed point from the dataset that falls within this distance. All other observed points are plotted as outliers.

The data for each athlete’s box plots can be filtered by season, discipline or even more precisely with a time range slider if you select “Specified Range“. Every single stat category (all except the first five in the dropdown list) also allow a per Season series visualization (the one you can see above).

Forum member PolitiskTeoriFan made these nice looking course profiles and agreed to have them posted here. Thanks a lot for that! I created a new page where you can click through all of them. Unfortunately, visualizations exist only for the 3.3km loops right now. However, they should still be useful, even for other races. At most venues this 3.3km loop is usually just an extension of shorter loops and you can use the split time positions for orientation; they rarely change between races.

Lastly, I added a page with general explanations for all major statistics. This was previously only available (hidden) under the info icon on the seasons stats page.

Posted in Website updates

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