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Tag: 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

Why you should check out Real Biathlon

Posted on 2021-06-07 | by biathlonanalytics | Leave a Comment on Why you should check out Real Biathlon

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))

Posted in Statistical analysis | 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:

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
An exploration of Biathlon Relay Race data

Exploring Biathlon Relay race data

Posted on 2021-03-05 | by biathlonanalytics | Leave a Comment on Exploring Biathlon Relay race data

So far I have only worked with data from the individual races, but I wanted to familiarize myself more with the relay data. So I took yesterday’s crazy women’s race and did some research on their relay.

Progression of the race by rank

Team average skiing and shooting times

Note: the axis are reversed, so top right is good, bottom left not so good

Noticeable is Kazakhstan, not one of the most prominent countries in biathlon at this point, who ranked second in fastest Average Range Time. Not let’s see how their (and other countries’) shooting went:

Shooting

With only two reloads, it is no wonder Kazakhstan had a very good Range Time. Czech Republic had a horrible day at the range with 5 penalty loops and 16 reloads. Sweden, the eventual winner, had 6 reloads.

When we look at the combined efforts of all team members per team, we can see what the spread was within the teams. The closer they were, the more consistent they raced as a team. The following chart has four columns per team: the total leg time per athlete per team, also showing the team’s spread; the average leg time for the team; the spread expressed in Standard Deviation; and the average range time per team:

Spread within team

This shows that Sweden and Belarus were very consistent as a team, as were Germany, Poland and Japan for example. On the other hand Norway had some great performances, but also some weak ones, not very consistent. Finland had the biggest spread.

If we start digging one layer deeper, let’s look at the Top 5, Canada and USA and who their best performers were, based on total course time per leg (coloured bars) and their three course-laps course times (dots: light blue is course 1, dark blue is course 3). The athletes are sorted within their teams based on the best total course times:

Teams’ best performers

The chart above also shows how consistent their three-course times were; the closer together, the more consistent. I all cases the third course was the fastest, which makes sense as they have done their shooting by then and can go all-out. The following shows, again for only the Top 5, Canada and USA, the right column from above in more detail and has ordered by athletes with the fastest course time (in every case their third):

Fastest course times

Not shockingly, Tiril Eckhoff had the fastest course time in her third course. Tandrevold was third, but Roeiseland and Lien were 12th and 15th.

Lastly, we can look at individual performances. I recommend going to the interactive version of the report, and when hovering your mouse over the name of a column, you can click the sort ascending or descending button to see who’s best, and who is not. Below I show the Top 15 athletes per measurement:

Individual performances

Best total time per leg (three loops, skiing and shooting)
Best total skiing time per leg (three loops, skiing only)
Best time of fastest course time (one course, skiing only)
Best time for total shooting time per leg (two shootings)
Best time for total range time per leg (two shootings)

This concludes my examination for now, but now that I am more familiar with the relay data, I’m sure you’ll find more research and postings about relays in the future. Cheers!

Posted in Statistical analysis | Tagged Data, Relay

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