On the previous article, we briefly saw that records went on a downward spiraling from 2012, to reach the worst season in winter 2016-2017, given the number of races (15 in 2016, 12 in 2017). What could have been the reason? It seems the culprit is MAG in Fort Saint John, where participation was at a minimum, and probably many top performers didn’t attend. In 2018 the trend is positive so far, for the first time in… 5 years!
Now let’s see what happened in terms of gender performance over the years. What strikes at first is that ladies and gentlemen have the same (generally positive) trends season after season. The only reason I can think of is that it depends on participation numbers following the same paths, i.e. more people racing in Berlin and Thialf, less people racing in Bjugn (just to name some venues).
But when we delve deeper by country, things change. In some cases, spectacularly. Check for instance the following countries, by age class and gender:
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While both GER and RUS show negative trends, Russian skaters (either male and female) are consistently performing season after season, Germans do not (although their ladies are a bit better). On the other hand, the Dutch are kicking ass with a very consistent and positive trend. Kudos!
As for age class and gender distribution, we reflect the same tendencies other sports show in masters’s participation numbers. The range between M/F45 and M/F65 are the most populated: no wonder there, as middle age remind us the need for speed, and extensive professional careers provide for the expenses.
But when it comes to total number of records established in the past 7 seasons, the gold medal goes to a lady. Congratulations to Monique Boerema, the best master skater by a long shot! In the top 10 we find yet another illustrious lady: Silvia Tassara (9º). See below the list of the Top 40 skaters by records marked since 2011.
Next, I wanted to see how each gender performed in terms of racing times. I took all official record times in all races and calculated the median, which is the value that stands between the best and the worst time. I assumed the average time won’t be a good measure, since there can be enormous differences between the best and worst time, considering there are former world champs racing against rookies in almost every age group and gender. Here’s what I found:
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What the data tells us is that gentlemen are rather consistent, while ladies’ performances are variable from season to season. Moreover, should we ever want to modify minimum qualification times for Master Games, these tables can give us a hint of which would be acceptable times for each gender and age group.
Finally, I was able to construct tables with total individual records by age, sex and country, which can even be aggregated by record type. I cannot publish ALL countries tables here, but IMSSC countries delegates can request for their respective analysis.
In the final article, we’ll study Masters records from country and venue variables.
Thanks for reading!
Marcello Bresin
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