Choosing Opponents in Skiing Sprint Elimination Tournaments

Niklas Karlsson () and Anders Lunander
Additional contact information
Niklas Karlsson: Örebro University School of Business, Postal: Örebro University, School of Business, SE - 701 82 ÖREBRO, Sweden, https://www.oru.se/english/employee/niklas_karlsson

No 2020:6, Working Papers from Örebro University, School of Business

Abstract: In this study we analyse data from world cup cross-country skiing sprint elimination tournaments for men and women in 2015-2020. Instead of being assigned a quarterfinal according to a seeding scheme, prequalified athletes choose themselves in sequential order in which of five quarterfinals to compete. Due to a time constraint on the day the competition is held, the recovery time between the knockout heats varies. This implies a clear advantage for the athlete to race in an early rather than in a late quarterfinal to maximize her probability of reaching the podium. The purpose of the paper is to analyse the athletes’ choices facing the trade-off between recovery time and expected degree of competition when choosing in which quarterfinal to compete. We find empirical support for the prediction that higher ranked athletes from the qualification round prefer to compete in early quarterfinals, despite facing expected harder competition. Nevertheless, our results also suggest that athletes underestimate the value of choosing an early quarterfinal. In addition, we propose a seeding scheme capturing the fundamental disparity across quarterfinals using the estimates from a logistic regression model.

Keywords: choosing opponent; sequential choise; seeding; skiing sprint (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C51 C72 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2020-08-11, Revised 2020-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.oru.se/globalassets/oru-sv/institution ... rs2020/wp-6-2020.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:oruesi:2020_006

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Örebro University, School of Business Örebro University School of Business, SE - 701 82 ÖREBRO, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().