Last weekend’s mass starts marked the halfway point of the season (13 of 26 races are done). This is probably a good time to take another look at the overall performances this winter. Below, I listed the season-to-season changes in the Overall Performance Score of regular World Cup athletes (at least 8 races in the last two seasons), plus the current top 15 per gender (full results for the entire field here: men & women). You can do your own season-to-season comparisons for all stats in the Patreon bonus area.
Note: The scores are standard scores (or z-scores), indicating how many standard deviations (SD) an athlete is back from the World Cup mean (negative values indicate performances better than the mean). The Total Performance Score is calculated by approximating the importance of skiing, hit rate and shooting pace using the method of least squares (for more details, see here and here), and then weighting each z-score value accordingly.
Men
It’s always interesting to me how accurately this very theoretical method reflects the current World Cup standings. For the men, the top 2, Johannes Thingnes Bø and Sturla Holm Lægreid, are predicted correctly – only through skiing and shooting stats, without taking a single race result into account. I think that’s pretty good. Twelve of the top 15 come within two positions of their current World Cup rank.
Quentin Fillon Maillet is overestimated, in large parts because he forgot to do a penalty loop in the Oberhof sprint (which essentially ruined two races for him). It’s no surprise that something like that isn’t reflected here. Arnd Peiffer is ranked four positions higher than his current World Cup rank, however, he missed two races in Hochfilzen last month and his average race position (14.7) would rank him 9th overall, therefore this ranking is not a bad estimation of his form this season.
Top 15 Overall performance score (z-Scores) | Non-Team events 2020–21 season
Looking at changes season-to-season, the Swedish duo Martin Ponsiluoma and Sebastian Samuelsson are the most improved biathletes, mainly due to their new found ski speed. Lukas Hofer comes third; he had a very impressive two weeks in Oberhof (top 6 results in all four non-team races). Benjamin Weger made his first podium in almost eight years last Sunday (his current non-team percentage is at an all-time high, 88.5%); he is the fourth most improved athlete right now.
2020–21 z-Scores compared to 2019–20 | Non-Team events
Women
World Cup leader Marte Olsbu Røiseland tops the women’s ranking, even though Tiril Eckhoff has won 6 out of 13 races so far. It’s a bit surprising that Eckhoff is only ranked third. Her overall season statistics are still affected by her very poor season opener in Kontiolahti, where she failed to make the World Cup points in both races.
Eckhoff’s ranking could be an argument that the best and worst one/two/three data points should be thrown out to better reflect an athlete’s expected standard performance. Presumably, the ranking would then no longer correlate as closely to the current World Cup standings though. Overall, 13 of the top 15 come within two positions of their current World Cup rank; no one in the top 8 is off by more than one position.
Top 15 Overall performance score (z-Scores) | Non-Team events 2020–21 season
Just like on the men’s side, the most improved skier, Dzinara Alimbekava, is also the most improved biathlete overall, confirming again that ski speed is by far the most important aspect of the sport – maybe not in a single race, but certainly if you look at results over longer periods. Elvira Öberg and Tuuli Tomingas come second and third. Monika Hojnisz-Staręga suffered one of the biggest declines season-to-season, however, after an extremely poor December, she was much improved in Oberhof.
2020–21 z-Scores compared to 2019–20 | Non-Team events