Quick GPS-analysis of Arosa WCup Sprint Relay

Sprint Relay means high-speed combination of forking and routechoices – and usually very few know which routechoices were fastest – and how the relay was decided in the end. The Arosa World Cup Sprint Relay had the same elements – below some of the most interesting legs in the relay are briefly analyzed. 

Note that no split times have been posted at the organizer’s webpage or in Winsplits, and therefore this analysis is kept very brief. Due to the lack of split times the analysis is not very accurate, but the large number of routes/runners makes it possible to still draw some conclusions.

Leg 2

The first long leg in the relay was the long leg to control 2. Here there were many different routechoices as you can see in the two illlustrations below (for men and women, respectively). Note that both the first and second controls are forked. For the first control one can look at a common “from” point. For control 2 it is looked at the control which is closest to the 1st control. The left variants will be some seconds worse for this control closest to the first control.

Overall the best route to both forkings for the seconds control seems to be to go slight right like Kvaal Østerbø, Lassen and Natalia Vinogradova. Other variants lose you from 5 to 15 seconds for the men and 5 to 25 seconds for the women.

Leg 20

Another long leg with many different route choices ran. This time the controls are not forked, but it does not seem to have changed the willingness to take different route choices. Going slight right is clearly the fastest here – and again it is interesting to see how many choise the wrong route.

Leg 8 and 16

Leg 8 and 16 are short legs, but the GPS indicated that going left is clearly faster for both of them.

Full GPS-tracking

Full GPS-tracking is available here

Full results