Hello Managers,
The Fall World Cups are officially in the rear view
mirror. It’s been a busy five weeks, with four very eventful weekends crammed into the
short time frame. As always, the Fall Circuit didn’t disappoint. The start of
the season always feels like a bit of a lottery and we never know which of our
favourite skaters is gonna come out swinging for the first few Cups (while crossing
out fingers that they didn’t somehow forget how to skate during the off season).
Now that we have four World Cups worth of points added
up, we’re starting to get the lay of the land. Which skaters are popping off?
Which teams look like a lock to finish in the money? Which teams should give up
all hope? How many more times will Joy Beune get DQ’d for forgetting equipment
in the team pursuit? These may all seem like easy questions to answer, but
often the obvious answer isn’t the right one.
I’m going to start this post by letting you know
You’re
Not as Fucked as You Think
. Unless, of course, you have a ton of sprinters
and/or will have a short roster come World Sprints/Allrounds. In that case,
You’re
More Fucked Than You Think
. As always, I’ll end this World Cup update with
the
Injury Tracker
and
Free Agent Tracker.
You’re Not as Fucked as You Think
Wait, did you read that right? Is Dad really telling
you there’s hope? Instead of shitting on all of your teams, is Dad saying there
might be something to look forward to over the next few months? Amazingly, the
answer is a resounding “yes”.
We just finished up the 4
th
weekend of
racing. Between the six World Cups and the two World Championship weekends, the
season might feel half over already. For those of you down in the depths of the
league standings, things might be feeling a bit desperate. But what if I told
you there was still tons of time to turn things around? What if I told you that
the season was only 28% complete?
To figure this out, we have to think of each individual
event as a
Race Equivalent.
Each World Cup has one or two 500m events
and usually one but sometimes two 1000m events. Each World Cup also has one
event each for the 1500m, Long Distance, and Mass Start categories. Take this number
of events, double it for the two sexes, and then we come out with a
Race
Equivalents
number for each World Cup of between 12 and 14. That's 12-14
chances each and every World Cup weekend to win 25 points by finishing in first
place in an event.
Now, World Single Distance Championships is a much
more important event, so it’s weighted with a 4x points multiplier. WSD features
only one of each of the sprint events, but it also has both of the Long
Distance events for both men and women. Taking the number of events and using
the 4x multiplier, WSD is worth 48
Race Equivalents
. You see where this
is going?
In total, the first 4 World Cups represent 46
Race
Equivalents.
This season, there are 162
Race Equivalents
on the schedule.
This means we’re only done 28% of the season so far, despite having raced half
of the scheduled weekends. Now, some of the keener readers might be thinking
about the points that skaters get paid out at the end of the Circuit for the
World Cup Standings and how these standings are already largely decided. That’s
true, but even if we include those not-yet-paid-out points, you could still
only say that the racers have skated 37% of the season. At the very least, it
is entirely true to say that the points you see next to all of our team names
in the current League Standings represents only 28% of the points that will be
handed out this season.
So what does this mean for your team? Well, in short,
this means that there is a ton of time left to make it to the top of the league
standings. Aside from a few outliers, the league is currently super tight. 40%
of the league is within a 100-point range (or, put another way, one gold medal
at Worlds) and 65% of the league is within 200 points (or two gold medals). Maybe
these numbers feel big now, but as the total team values go up throughout the season
this will feel like nothing.
I’ll illustrate how quick things can change with a
quick example. If you currently have this year's version of a 2019-2020 Graeme
Fish on your team then you might be feeling kinda down. A smattering of points
in the 5000m is nice but it ain’t getting you very far. The One Hit Wonder From
Moose Jaw then landed on two podiums at WSD and added on the world record and
track record bonus points. If that were to happen now, that rather unexpected
points haul would bring you from the depths of the league to a very nice spot
in the money. If this were to happen to
Team Swinging Jake Paulers
,
they would go from 32
nd
to 5
th
in the league standings. And
that’s just one racer at World Champs, nevermind the rest of the 72% of the
season’s points that have yet to be handed out.
Does this seem to good to be true? Well, it’s not.
None of us predicted Ragne’s WSD 1500m victory. None of us predicted Hallgeir’s
Olympic podium. None of us thought Corno would leave last year’s WSD with a
bronze medal. We never know how things will play out, and that’s what makes
fantasy skating so fun. So, if your team looks like it sucks, it probably does.
But there’s at least a chance that you’ll be the next
DwightDaddy69
miracle
World Champs team and crawl out of the depths thanks to even just a handful of incredible
races.
You’re More Fucked Than You Think
Ok, that’s enough optimism from me. God, I hate pretending
to be nice. Makes me feel sick to the stomach. Time to inject a nice dose of
Dad into this column (please don’t read that sexually).
Some of you are indeed not as fucked as you think, but
not all of you. Some of you are definitely just as fucked as you think you are.
Worse still, some of you are actually a lot more fucked than you think you are.
You may be sitting there all cozy in the top 10 thinking you’re a lock to win
some money, but by season’s end you’ll have fallen from your mighty perch.
Instead of thinking your team “choked” or you “got unlucky”, just refer back to
this column. Dad knew you were fucked this whole time and, honestly, you should
have known too.
So, how do we know who is fucked and who is not? Part
of it is based on vibes (as is every Dad’s Column) but part of it is based on
some simple math. Using our new
Race Equivalents
concept, we can look at
types of skaters, or even individual skaters, and see how far along the season
they are. I’ll go over skater types a bit here, but the deeper results and data
will mostly show in the next
Crappy Tire Power Rankings
update (release
date undecided, but it will likely be in the next week or two).
Let’s start with your average long-distance specialist
(not average in ability or thicccness, but average in events raced). Let’s call
him David Ghiotto just for fun. Now, Davide races just one race at each World
Cup, either a 5000m or 10,000m. But, at WSD Davide races two events (5000m and
10,000m) that are each worth 4x points. Davide might even race World Allrounds
and, because his 5000m is not as average as I first suggested, he’ll get to
race the 10,000m event and finish in the top 8. At the first 4 World Cups, Davide
raced 4
Race Equivalents
. This season, he is hoping to race 20
Race
Equivalents
, plus the additional season rank top up. This means Davide is
only done 20% of his season—or, put in other words, his season has barely even
started. Tack on the classification bonus points and any track record or world
record bonus points that you think he has a chance at and 20% may even be on
the high end of what we could predict him to have completed already.
Now let’s move on to a generic 500m skater. Maybe we’ll
call our guy Jun-Ho Kim. Buddy only skates the 500m, so no 1000m funny business
happening here. Guy also doesn’t usually go to World Sprints (the real Jun-Ho
Kim went once in 2015 and finished a measly 17
th
). So this man is a
pure 500m specialist. He will race ten 500m events at the World Cups, and then
tack on the 4x points 500m at WSD. This means he will likely race 14
Race
Equivalents
. There were seven 500m events at the first 4 World Cups, so Kim
has raced 7 of 14
Race Equivalents
—or, in other words,
half his
season.
He will get the extra pay out for his World Cup Ranking, but even
this has been 70% decided already, so you could actually argue that Kim’s
season is
already over half over
.
One skater is over half done his season while the
other has the vast majority of his potential points to look forward to in the
winter months. This is why some of you are so much more fucked than you think.
Maybe your team is loaded with Jun-Ho Kims and you’re feeling all good about
yourself because you keep crushing World Cups. But if World Cup 3 in Stavanger
was your worst weekend by a stretch, you might be in trouble. That single-500m
event weekend is just a taste of what is to come in February and March.
For every team with a Kim, there’s a team with a
Davide just waiting to fly by his opponent in the league standings in the last
two months of the season. Now, obviously many teams have a mix of skater types
and distances covered—maybe a handful of Kims but also a handful of Davide’s.
Things are much more complex than this simple comparison I've provided. But some teams really are heavily weighted in sprinters and these are the teams that
are
probably*
more fucked than they think they are
.
*(I say probably because this is far from
certain. Based on 2022 World Sprints/Allrounds, trying to guess who will show
up at Worlds and who won’t is a fools errand. Lucky for you, I’m a fool).
Injury Tracker
David La Rue –
An
unfortunate bike crash during a camp in Spain between the World Cups ended this
French Canadian's fall circuit early. We wish Dave all the best in his recovery.
Vanessa Herzog –
Though
she has yet to hit a podium, she seems to be out of her funk and trending in
the right direction. She will now be removed from the tracker.
Isabelle Weidemann –
She
left the fall circuit early to head home, stating rest and a focus on World
Champs as the reasons. If she wants to go to Worlds, she’ll probably have to
qualify a time spot at World Cup 5 so we can expect to see her back in action
(albeit in B Group) at the next World Cup. Otherwise, we likely won’t see her
again this season.
Yekaterina Aydova –
Honest
to God I cannot figure out what is going on here. Maybe she actually is just
getting slow, which would be a bloody shame.
Qishi Li –
Maybe
this is less of an injury and more of a “where the fuck did you go?” moment.
She crushed two World Cups and is now MIA. Dead? It’s fifty-fifty, she either
is or she isn’t.
Sander Eitrem –
He
podiumed the first two 5000m races of the season and then scratched the third. Some
insiders are suggesting he is sick, but I think he is just being a weenie.
Hopefully he becomes less of a weenie very soon (or Dad’s team might be in
trouble).
Joy Beune –
After
a series of missteps in the team pursuit over the course of the past few races,
Beune has been diagnosed as “
incredibly unreliable
” and “
a bit slow
”. I must
stress that the latter refers to her cognitive ability and not her skating
speed which is actually quite fast.
Momoka Horikawa –
A
pretty rough pair of distance races and then a scratched 1500m at World Cup 4 is not
a good sign. No reported injury yet, but something doesn’t feel right with this
one.
Laurent Dubreuil –
A
rumoured tweaked back has been bothering this Canadian sprinter and is the purported
reason for his scratched 1000m at WC4. The back can’t be
that
tweaked
though as he is coming off a gold and silver medal performance this past
weekend.
Kjeld Nuis –
This
mid-distance behemoth didn’t show up this past weekend despite being on the
entry list. Are his creaky old knees failing him again already?
Botond Bejczi – “
MISSING
MAN REPORT – On the morning of December 7
th
, Botond Bejczi was
reported missing by a close family member. Suspiciously, another male Hungarian
named Bálint Bodei entered the World Cup as a skater. After a couple of bad
races, he withdrew from the rest of the weekend”
“MISSING MAN UPDATE - Botond Bejczi, who
was reported missed on December 7
th
, was found in the comfort of his
hotel room in Tomaszów Mazowiecki the evening of December 9
th
. He refused
to answer questions about what happened to him while missing and just wants to
go and lose some speed skating races.”
Bálint Bodei
–
“MISSING
MAN REPORT - Bálint Bodei, 20, was reported missing by the Hungarian Skating
Federation late on December 9
th
. Local police are investigating in
Poland where he was reported as missing. Due to the similarity in name to one
of his teammates and even more eerily similar bad skating times, police suspect
the two Hungarian shitters are actually one person. The two have yet to be seen
in the same room.”
The Canadian Men’s TP –
By
God I almost hope that there is an injury, sickness, literally anything I can point
to as an excuse for their embarrassingly bad performance at the World Cups so
far.
Free Agent Tracker
Taiyo Nonomura –
Four
straight weekends of averaging 12 points per World Cup is a strong resume for a
free agent. This Japanese mid-distance skater is still available in two pools.
Livio Wenger –
I
used to sometimes put this guy in the tracker as a joke, but he’s actually
getting results this year. Take out his one fall, he’s averaging just over a
bronze medal each weekend and is the third highest ranked free agent in the
skater rankings. He is still available in an incredible four pools.
Sumire Kikuchi –
This
Japanese middle distance and mass start skater is currently tied in the skater
rankings with both Thomas Krol and Isabelle Weidemann. That means she must be
good, right? Right? Right…?
Marcel Bosker –
Most
of his points so far came from a freak mass start win, something I wouldn’t expect
him to repeat. But, as we enter the second half of the season, you might want
to keep you eye on this all-round solid Dutchman at Dutch trials.
Michele Malfatti –
I
made fun of Tay for picking this shitter up. Then he hit a podium in the 10k and
cracked the top 50 in the skater rankings list. I guess I owe someone an
apology.
Havard Holmefjord Lorentzen –
He
may not have landed on the podium since being added to the free agent tracker
but, lucky for you, he is still available as a free agent. Maybe those two are
related somehow….
Jae-Won Chung
–
A reliable mass start sprint finisher, consider this year’s version of Chung to
essentially be Wenger-Lite. The speedy Korean is still available in three
pools.
Hein Otterspeer
–
This giant (and handsome) Dutch sprinter is still available in one pool. He has
a top 4 finish in the 500m as well as a podium finish in the 1000m. The
downside? He might not race again this year depending on how Dutch Trials goes
in two weeks.
Sverre Lunde Pedersen –
Looking
for a slow, replaceable trickle of points? Look no further, this is definitely your
guy. Comes with the added bonus of some pretty high pop-off-ability at World
Allrounds…. if he ends up going.
Conor McDermott-Mostowy –
This
up-and-coming American sprinter/alleged mass starter is ahead of Connor Howe,
Jorrit Bergsma, Piotr Michalski, Kai Verbij, Beau Snellink, and Graeme Fish in
the skater rankings. That’s a pretty elite list. He even has more points than
the last three on that list combined. Snag this American speedster before you miss
the chance!
That’s all for today, fam. There may not be much international
racing for the next little while, but I’ll be back in the not-so-distant future
with a couple of columns that I owe my faithful readers. Obviously the
Crappy
Tire Power Rankings
update will need to come out soon now that we’re
done another pair of World Cups, but I also have a couple other works in the
mix. With tons of national championship and winter trial events coming in the
next 3-4 weeks, we have plenty to cover before this league resumes racing with
World Cup 5 at the end of January. In the meantime, happy holidays and I hope you
spend most of your time deciding which shiny new free agent you want to pick up
after seeing them shred at their respective national trials event.
Cheers,
Dad