State competitions

Charts: Age, Gender, Geography, By wave: Birkie Freestyle, Birkie Classic, Korteloppet Freestyle, Korteloppet Classic, 2011 statistics index
Data: State data for all finishers, State "competitions", "special data" search
           FS men, FS women, CL men, CL women

Taking the state-by-state data, I imagined various "teams" of skiers showing up to throw down at the Birkie. The main page of state-by-state data shows results for each state, but for jurisdictions with more than a few skiers showing up, we can delve in further.

First up, of course, is Minnesota vs. Wisconsin. We've established that Wisconsin has more skiers in the races, but that Minnesotans are faster. What does this mean? Who knows. But we can go further. Let's take the top 10 skiers from each state. Who wins there?

And let's not just do this for Minnesota and Wisconsin. Let's take any state where at least 10 skiers show up for a skate event, and five for a classic event, give them all scores, and see what happens. However many places were available were given points, and those were distributed amongst the top 10 or 5 finishers for each state and event.

So, Minnesota wins three out of four categories, but Wisconsin takes the men's freestyle race. Click on the full results to see points totals and the lists of skiers. I even scored for Massachusetts.

And what about the biggest ski cities? Four cities send at least 200 skiers total to the Birkie races: Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Duluth and Madison. So, of course, who's fastest?

Well, Duluth generally takes the cake, winning all categories except the Korte freestyle women and the Korte freestyle overall, both taken by Saint Paul. Minneapolis and Madison are shut out of the win column across the board, but they clock in with more participants than the other cities. Minneapolis, especially, has a lot of freestyle skaters, doubling the participation in the Birkie skate race of Saint Paul and Duluth, and more than tripling the other cities in the number of freestyle women. Madison, however, is the only city with more than 100 skiers in the Birkie Classic.

For Minnesota, there are only three instances where participation doesn't follow population and go Minneapolis-Saint Paul-Duluth. One is the Korte classic where Saint Paul and Duluth tie for second across the board, men, women and overall: each city sent the same number of each gender. In the Birkie men's freestyle race, Duluth had more men than Saint Paul (but many fewer women, so Saint Paul has more overall freestyle skiers) and the Birkie classic women's race, where Saint Paul topped Minneapolis and Duluth.

Participation rates in these cities outpaces the participation of their respective states. In Saint Paul, one out of every 1145 residents skis the Birkie, and it severly lags the others. Minneapolis is 1-in-781, Madison 1-in-452 and Duluth, with only 86,265 residents, sees one out of every 396 of its residents driving down to Birkieland in February.

And can we depict these data graphically? You bet we can:

Charts: Age, Gender, Geography, By wave: Birkie Freestyle, Birkie Classic, Korteloppet Freestyle, Korteloppet Classic, 2011 statistics index
Data: State data for all finishers, State "competitions", "special data" search
           FS men, FS women, CL men, CL women

© 2010-2011, Ari Ofsevit / birkieguide.com
This site is in no way affiliated with the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation, the Birkebeiner or the Birkie. But it is a huge Birkie fanboy.

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