Östersund Weeked Recap Part 2

1) Sebastian Samuelsson: Same Old Story or New Start?

Sebastian Samuelsson has been on the front of my mind as I’ve been thinking about Östersund. He was active in almost every race and had an incredible Pursuit to come away with a victory. Most impressively he was near dominant on the skis almost every time he put on skis. For example he was 15.9 seconds faster than Dale-Skjevdal in the Individual and 20 seconds faster than Nawrath in the Sprint. The only time he wasn’t fastest was in the Pursuit where all he did was win the race with the 2nd fastest course time on the day by a mere 2.8 seconds.

We’ve seen this before though right? Samuelsson starting out the season like a banshee with unbelievable speed, and even a few wins, only to be followed by a drop in form and disappointing racing. Sometimes a surge at Worlds or Olympics. Sometimes a late season surge as well. Or is that just my memory?

Let’s look back at his performances over the last four seasons, since he really became a force on the World Cup, and see how his performance in weeks one and two compares to the rest of the season. These numbers are four the 2020-2021 season through this year and will include Worlds and Olympics.

So you can see that the overwhelming majority of his wins come in the first two weeks of the season. He also has 40% of his podiums coming in just the first two weeks of the season. This does seem to confirm that my memory hasn’t completely failed me. He does seem to do his best racing, and certainly the most winning, right at the start of the season. After that it falls a little bit. This is why almost every season I look at Samuelsson out of the gate and think “This is going to be the year he challenges for the Overall!” However, as of yet his best Overall finish is 3rd from the 2021-2022 season when he was quite a ways back of Quintin Fillon Maillet’s dominance.

You can also look at his skiing in the first two weeks compared to the rest of the season to try to see a similar story:

It’s pretty clear that Sebbe Samuelsson comes into the season on better form than his competitors. Whether he decays in form after that, or everybody else catches up is beyond the scope of this article to prove. However, it does appear though, that my memory doesn’t deceive me in this regard either.

In general, over the last four seasons Samuelsson has come into the season looking tremendously strong. He’s faster than almost everybody and he scores a large percentage of his high finishes, including 80% of his victories in these first two weeks. Now the question is, will he continues the form he showed in Oestersund for the rest of this season? I guess, based on his history, we can expect to see it in Hochfilzen But what about beyond that? If so he is still running away from the field in Lenzerheide or even Oberhof then this is a new world and a new story!

2) Return of the Voigt

Coming into the 2022-2023 season Vanessa Voigt was a hot name as a potential dark horse contender for the Overall Globe. Last season, though, proved to be more of a learning experience than a glory filled campaign for the Globe. She ended up with three top 5’s and six top 10’s. Those numbers were basically the exact same as her rookie year. She also had more “bad” finishes with four fewer top 20’s. She also had fewer top finishes. In 21-22 she managed her first career podium in the last trimester of the season. Unfortunately she failed to find the podium at all last season.

Looking at the gross statistics there wasn’t a major change, and considering she finished 13th Overall in 21-22 and 12th in 22-23, you wouldn’t expect a major change. She was modestly faster overall on the skis and she shot almost exactly the same (91.8% vs. 91%). Also, most notably, her shooting remained relatively slow moving up from 35.5 seconds to just 32.7 seconds last year. Basically it was the same year over year statistical performance and not the major breakthrough that we might have expected. Don’t get me wrong, none of it was really bad. It’s just that expectations were so high it didn’t quite live up to them.

Looking a little deeper at the numbers, the mild improvement in overall ski ranking doesn’t tell the whole story. She was incredibly inconsistent. She would go from a course time rank of 4th one day to 44th the next. That’s an actual example by the way. Starting at the World Championships she seemed to bottom out. From there on she was on a steady incline throughout the last trimester of the season. Outside of one hiccup race quite literally she had a better course time rank every single race. No longer did a plot of her course time ranks look like a crazy EKG or seismograph. Now it looks like a ski slope rising to the moon.

This season that has only continued. Over the first three solo races of the season her ski ranks per race are: 10th, 7th, and 4th. Right now she is ranked 6th in overall skiing which would be a monumental improvement. The last two seasons she was 1.3% faster than median. Right now she’s running 5.4% faster than median. That’s just gigantic.

She’s also continued to shoot at her characteristically high level. So far she’s hitting at 96%. While she won’t likely keep that up she’s almost assuredly going to shoot well all season. That’s her calling card. Can she shoot faster though? Right now she’s averaging just 32.3 seconds per shooting, still relatively slow. That appears to be the final frontier for her.

It’s incredibly early but right now Vanessa Voigt appears to have taken the leap that we anticipated or dreamed she would take last season. She’s faster and its borne out while watching the races. She is leading groups on the course rather than taking on to the back. She’s getting into bunches. I’m thrilled to see it. This is the Vanessa Voigt we were hoping to see and she’s here now. I hope she keeps it up through Canmore!

3) Where is Team France?

When you think back to Östersund 23-24 of course one of the things that you remember is that Lou Jeanmonnot broke through in an absolutely HUGE way. She got her first victory in the Sprint. Then she immediately got win #2 in the Pursuit. It wasn’t just a win though, she showed immense tenacity and fight, and even more than just winning twice, she immediately threw herself into the race for the women’s Overall Globe.

But what about the rest of the French team? They performed decently well in the relays.

– Single Mixed Relay: 3rd
– Mixed Relay: 1st
– Women’s Relay: 5th
– Men’s Relay: 3rd

Here are their current rankings in the Overall:

The good news is, it’s only been one weekend. The bad news, though, is that those rankings are nowhere close to where had hoped they would be. My reasonable expectations before the year was that the men would have 1-2 in the Top 10 and the women would have 2-3. So is there a common denominator for the slow start? Were they all shooting wildly or was there a clear waxing issue with slow skis?

French Women	22-23 Ski Rank	23-24 Ski Rank	22-23 Shooting	23-24 Shooting
Lou Jeanmonnot	19th	11th	90.3%	94%
Julia Simon	3rd	10th	88.3%	84%
Justine Braisaz-Bouchet	1st (21-22)	3rd	76.3% (21-22)	78%
Sophie Chauveau	10th	8th	80.6%	86%
Gilonne Guigonnat	N/A	28th	N/A	90%
Chloe Chevalier	15th	18th	86.3%	86.7%
French Men	22-23 Ski Rank	23-24 Ski Rank	22-23 Shooting	23-24 Shooting
Fabien Claude	10th	11th	83.6%	88%
QFM	11th	7th	88.6%	84%
Eric Perrot	26th	22nd	83.3%	84%
Emilien Jacquelin	12th	12th	78.3%	76%
Antonin Guigonnat	21st	29th	81.5%	84%
Emilien Claude	39th	44th	82.5%	90%

So the numbers themselves don’t give us too much of a hint. The skiing isn’t that far off from prior for anybody except for Julia Simon. She’s in a bit of a peculiar situation though. You can also argue that QFM and Jacquelin are a little slow as well. Not compared to last year but compared to the several years prior to that when they were regularly top 5-7 in the World Cup. Shooting by and large actually looks better this year than last. However, shooting overall was pretty good last weekend in Oestersund, so even though the pure percentages were pretty good the rankings were a little lower.

Here’s the point though, the French are mostly performing at or above levels they did last season. The men are probably in some ways still adapting to Simon Fourcade’s coaching as well. The results will come. In the meantime though Lou Jeanmonnot certainly put a heck of a silver (or golden) lining on the weekend!