On Feb 24, 3:07*pm, Spunout wrote:
On Feb 24, 2:32*pm, wrote:

On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:23:08 -0800 (PST)

jeff potter wrote:
If the skiers on our various Nordic teams were to race head to head,
who would win?

At what distance and technique? *

Would they all stop and shoot, and then do a jump?

I'd bet that the straight XC'ers would win 75% of the time over the
biathletes and combiners in a straight ski.

Here's why I say that: I suspect "athletic Darwinism" is at work.
What I mean by that...athletes tend to self-select the sport that best
suits their combination of strengths and physiology.

For example, let's take a parallel universe: a triathlete (S/B/R)
versus a duathlete (R/B/R) versus a straight up runner (R), as me

I could compete well locally as a runner, but could not compete
regionally or nationally. At 6' & 170lbs, I was too big to get real
fast (16 minutes for 5k). But that was plenty fast as a triathlete
regionally. But, my swimming held me back at the national level. So,
I "settled" for duathlon and qualified several times for worlds.

So, if we look at body "styles" for the different Olympic folks. It
seems to me, though I haven't looked at their physical measurements on
the web, that the combined guys seem taller, longer, and bigger in the
legs then the XC and biathletes.

In any event, this is a very interesting question...