World Cup Levi, part 2

 So last time, I quite simply created some means for further discussion and out of pure interest as I find numbers intriguing when they have something to do with athletic performance. Now it is time to build a perspective to a run of slalom skiing. Lets just bear in mind that this is just a way to look at it. Still I want to maintain that all this is circumstantial and a subject for further discussion rather than concrete evidence for conclusions.

So, again we are working with the top 40 skiers' data for the reasons mentioned previously. Thereby, the mean time was 54,39 seconds. That number by itself may not be indicative of lot, when just thinking about it: a short time, less than a minute, only fraction of an hour and so on. However, it is a hell of a long time to work intensively through out – even too long in my opinion. So I guess what I am trying to say is that one doesn't win anything on the first gates.

To elaborate a bit on the last blog, I checked the correlation/relationship for the part I studied last time: Start to I2 and from I2-Finish. The time at each given split is correlated to the position at finish. As we can see, the performance on the latter part of Levi Black is far more important for the finish position:

However, I still wanted to split the last part in to two, which indicated that performance between I2 and I3 was far more important than the last bit of slope. It was the steep part as we know, but also at the latter part of the run. 

To the next thing. Pacing is term used for spreading and distributing the effort from start to finish, which is widely used in endurance and sprint sports. Yohan Blake, Jamaican sprinter, once described 200m sprint as an event requiring pacing and still the event is about 20s only. In this case, 400m sprint is more in the ballpark as far as the length goes for slalom and 400m is even more influenced by pacing.

Ask someone to run 400m, I don't think many will start flat out, I sure hope they don't. If they do, the last hundred is a hilarious to watch. That is because you die at the end, hopefully not literally. Now add the motor skills and we are at Levi. So, I'm saying that pacing could well play its part in alpine skiing, because one can't work flat out over a period of roughly 60 seconds. If you think differently, I dare to ask you to try.

Let's consider an example here from purposefully picked Swiss representatives from their position at each time split:

We have two skiers with negative splits, meaning a slower start and considerably stronger finish. Now I don't know personally any of these skiers, but I don't think the differences in their abilities aren't that apparent. Now a bit more theory and guesswork: Yule and Aerni started ”more relaxed” or probably didn't ”kill” the start. Thus they saved a bit of energy (ATP) to the end. Because during those 54,39s on averge, a skier does certainly use all of their anaerobic capacity after which they start switching to aerobic supply. The aerobic supply is slower and it most likely makes the end of the run slower.

The message here is somewhat confusing maybe. Is it worth smashing it up from the start? Maybe not. Is it worth being smart at the start and spreading the effort? Maybe yes. Could be the pacing be the make or brake at Levi? Oh well, if I only knew for a fact; but here is the TOP 20 at each splits.

Notably, we then have Mr. Hirscher being at the top crop anywhere, anytime. The whole package kind of guy.