Water Ski Trends in Elite Water Skiing (Top 20), from 1998 to 2019

[Luzz]

In the healthy spirit of loving numbers, being more at home than usual, and wanting to get distracted from the sad numbers we are all familiarizing ourselves with… I'm bringing back an old post with some updated data, which anyone can view if interested.

 

Let's start with Women Slalom:

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I'll let you guys start speculating as you may. What I personally find very cool is that, starting 2014, 16th-20th is getting closer to the top20 mean while rising from prediction.

 

(@horton, I'll keep posting the other events as I go…)

[Luzz]

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I think an interesting and immediate comparison between Women and Men is the lowest gap between 1st-5th and 16th-20th in Men (3.65 buoys) compared to Women (5.7). Nothing surprising I would say, but interesting to see it in numbers.

[ALPJr]

Cool chart. Seems like an impressive gain especially in the women’s line.

[Luzz]

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Probably the most telling graph of them all. The spike in WRs in the late 2000s were definitely driven by women learning more flips, including Mobe BBs and Front Flips. Also, it seems like the Top 5 Women are gradually leaving the pack behind, where the 16th-20th have been pretty much flat since 2008. Is it due to flips? No incentive in the sport? Who knows…

 

I also ran a polynomial trend on the 16th-20th, and a quadratic trend brought R-squared from .748 to .87. In simple terms, it's more of an inverted-U shape than a linear trend

[Luzz]

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So interesting to see the difference for Men Tricks compared to Women's. Here, clearly the top level has kind of stayed the same (although not linear of course, with ups and downs), and the increase in WR did not drag that Top 5 average that much higher. At the same time, the Top20 average has been increasing steadily, and last year this group averaged over 11k. The linear increase of the Top20 mean and 16th-20th tells me (admittedly to my surprise) that Men's Tricks has become more competitive in recent years.

[Luzz]

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Back at it with Women Jump. This is probably the grimmest picture of the sport so far. As a point in case, the 16th-20th linear R-squared = .37, whereas quadratic is .76. And, for the top 20 average, Linear is .64, quadratic is .86.

In plain English, probably a handful of girls will keep pushing, and the rest will not invest as much time in the sport, bringing the level down.

Most likely the reason for this is the oscillation of those trends starting around 2012.

 

Again, so many reasons why, but cool to see the numbers.

[Cooper_Trelawney]

I imagine you will see similar data for mens jump too. It seems to me there were more men jumpers putting up big jumps 10-15 years ago compared to the past couple of years. @Luzz your research is appreciated! It enlightens and validates gut thoughts and perceptions.

[Luzz]

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And finally, @Horton's favorite… Men's Jump. here's things are pretty much unpredictable. I tried other functions but little improves. Maybe it's a coincidence, but after the release of Zero Off in 2009, jumping went a bit downhill for a few years… I'd also be curious to hear what happened in 2012… was Ryan/Freddy/Zack injured? And what happened in between 2012 and 2013 where the level all got better?

[Horton]

@luzz or is it DrLuzz now....

Your math skills are beyond my understanding... Since you have all the data I am curious about average scores with the top 10 or 20 in the world & what is the spread between their best round and 10th or 20th best round.

 

 

Also of possible interest...

Way back in the dark ages when I was a jumper I was amazed how close the the 5 or 10 pro jumpers were at any event. I it seemed like if Sammy jumped 208 then Carl, Bruce, and somebody else would jump 204, 202, 203. The delta always seemed oddly small.

[Luzz]

(Dr. Luzz after May 2)

 

@Horton So, top10 vs 11th-20th? Also, I only have averages of the two best performances (aka, RL). Fishing for 10th best score would be a massive undertaking of data fishing :open_mouth: