The Viña del Mar World Cup saw numerous interesting performances, several of which can be seen by delving into the statistics of the race.
The Men’s Swim
The above graphic shows the men’s swim distribution and from that it is possible to see just how much pressure Diego Moya put on the field with his aggressive tactics.
A small concentration of athletes emerged from the water around 15 seconds behind Moya. This group was then followed by a steady flow of athletes over the next 20 seconds until the largest cluster of athletes began to emerge.
The peak of the graph shows that the largest concentration of athletes exited the water a little over 40 seconds behind Moya. That is a very significant spread for a Sprint distance race.
In Viña del Mar, the key point in the swim exit seemed to take place between 25 and 30 seconds after the leader exited the water. Anyone that was out of the water before that point still had a chance of making the front group that ultimately formed. The rest of the field would ultimately go on to sit in the chase pack.
The Women’s Swim
The women’s swim distribution shares some similarities to the men’s race but with two important distinctions.
Like the men’s race, the graph shows a small cluster of athletes emerging after the swim leaders, with a second bigger cluster further back. This second cluster represents the biggest concentration of athletes, just as it did in the men’s race.
The two differences to the men’s race are that the two peaks in the graph are closer to the swim leader for the women. Whereas the main concentration of athletes were over 40 seconds behind the male leader, in the women’s race the main concentration of athletes were 32 seconds behind. Similarly, the first cluster of swimmers in the women’s race were closer to the leader than in the men’s race.
The other key difference is the dip between the first and second clusters in the women’s race. This dip is much more pronounced than the men’s graph and indicates that there was actually a split in the field.
As a result, a small group of women were able to get ahead on the bike, albeit with a smaller gap than was the case for the men.
Did the swim separate the field enough to affect the race?
As we saw in the men’s swim distribution, the field split into two main concentrations. The first cluster of athletes that emerged less than 30 seconds behind the leader were still mostly able to make the front pack. Those that came after did not.
To determine how influential this split in the field was, we now look at the biggest improvements from the swim exit to the end of the race.
When athletes make up large numbers of places, such as over 35 to 40 places, from the end of the swim to the end of the race, this indicates one of two common things. The first is that they were able to use the bike and run to compensate for any lost time in the water. The second is that the gaps in the swim were small and so did not prove significant.
There is one other key point to note: how high the biggest improvers actually go on to finish in the race.
The Men’s Comebacks
In Viña del Mar, a lead group of 19 men cycled together on the bike. Even if the last man into that group had gone on to win the race, he would not have had as big an improvement from the swim as the athletes listed in the above graphic. As a result, this graphic will always favour the athletes in the chase over those in the lead group. It also shows to a degree that data on its own cannot tell us everything.
There are two important lessons to draw from the graphic.
The first is that only one athlete, Rodrigo Gonzalez of Mexico, gained over 30 places after the swim. The rest of the improvements were a little more contained.
The second insight it that none of the men that made a top-5 comeback were able to make their way into the top-10 by the end of the race. This indicates that the gaps created by Moya’s fast swim essentially dictated the terms of the run. The swim stretched the field and prevented a large group from forming on the bike. The lead group then did not lose any time to the chase during the bike and so it was only in the run that the chase could make up any time.
Therefore, in the men’s race, we can deduce that the swim was a highly influential factor in the outcome of the race.
The Women’s Comebacks
Before analysing the biggest comebacks in the women’s race, there is one important factor to acknowledge.
Two of the leaders in a small break out of T1, Lea Coninx and Emy Legault, unfortunately crashed on the first corner of the course. This meant that even though break did emerge after the swim, that was quickly undone by a crash.
As the women’s lead group lost momentum after the crash, a bigger pack grouped together. Some athletes that had been further back in the swim were able to make up time and catch the group as they had a smaller margin to make up than in the men’s race.
Notably, the biggest improvers were all athletes that made this large main group. Most tellingly, and in contrast to the men, all of the biggest comebacks for the women made it into the top-10 overall.
The lesson we can draw from that, then, is that the swim and the bike were not the key separator in the women’s race. Instead, the athletes that made their improvements did so during the run.
The Run
Finally we come to the run distributions for both the men’s and women’s races. Interestingly, both races saw the highest concentration of runners 80 seconds behind the leader, although the men’s race had a similar peak 45-50 seconds behind the leader.
