The Classic Birkie, by the Numbers

With the biggest race of the midwest ski season approaching, I thought it would be a good time to take an analytical look at the classic version of the event. This blog post is ultimately about a stats project I’ve been working on that quantifies and visualizes past men’s classic Birkie results. However, I feel like I first need to give some context by telling my Birkie story and what led me to starting this project. 

The classic Birkie instantly became my favorite race after skiing it for the first time in 2014 as a freshman in college, finishing in 308th place. The following year, instead of making goals focused on getting good results in college races, I was dreaming of finishing in the top 100 of the classic Birkie. This dream came true as I surprised myself with a 19th place finish that year. However, with NCAA regionals being held on the same weekend as the Birkie my junior year and the Birkie being canceled my senior year (2017), 19th place was the high point of my Birkie performances in college. 

On course during my second Birkie in 2015

After college, I struggled to find motivation and consistency in my training. I skipped the 2018 Birkie, then finished 102nd in 2019 and 447th in 2020. I then skipped the race for two years in a row while doing very little skiing in general. I had lost motivation and any thought of improving on my previous best of 19th was long gone. However, in 2022 I started pharmacy school and moved to Duluth. The new environment gave me an unexpected new motivation to start training and racing again. As I approached that year’s Birkie I was hopeful, but unsure of how this new motivation would impact my finish. Starting in wave 2, I skied most of the race by myself and felt the best I had on skis in a long time. After finishing I quickly found out I beat my previous best from 8 years prior, finishing in 9th place. This inspired me to train even harder the following year and I went into the 2024 Birkie looking to improve again. However, due to a strong men's field and a short, looped course, the competition was difficult and I ultimately came in 9th place again.

Finish line of the 2024 looped course Birkie

That brings me to the reason for this post. As I was nearing my thirties with two of my best ever ski race results in the books it was obvious to me that I wouldn’t keep improving forever. Being honest with myself I knew that if I didn't have a goal to chase that made me feel like I was building towards something new I might find it difficult to motivate myself and stay active in the sport.
So what could I do to make sure I had something to motivate me in the next few decades while I inevitably slow down? I thought I could set a goal to be the most consistent Birkie skier I could be over multiple years. But how would I measure consistency? I ended up looking to another area of cross country skiing that uses a points system to score and rank athletes over a series of races: the World Cup Overall Crystal Globe. In short, athletes on the World Cup get 100 points for winning a race and 1 point for finishing in 50th place. Here’s a full breakdown: 

World Cup Scoring Points by Position 

I realized that if this same scoring system was applied to each edition of the Birkie we would get a pretty good sense of which skiers were performing the best year after year. I recorded the results and corresponding points for the top 50 skiers from each classic Birkie since 2008, when separate skate and classic races were first held. After tallying up the points I ended up with graphs showing who the most consistent skiers have been and how their results have trended over the years. With this data I could both appreciate great Birkie performances in a new light as well as motivate myself to reach for longterm goals in the future. For the following graph I selected the 10 male skiers who have had the most cumulative points based on my scoring system, and plotted how they earned those points over each edition of the classic Birkie.

With Murray Carter ranking in first, different skiers in the top 10 show various career trajectories

As you can see, some skiers have been putting in consistent performances since 2008, racking up points every year. Others have had long gaps between performances and others still had stopped scoring altogether at a certain point. Of note, when we see a skier stop earning points it's impossible to tell from the graph alone whether they're simply not finishing in the top 50, have decided to race the skate Birkie instead, or have given up skiing entirely.

Next, I thought it would be interesting to see if there was an age where top skiers tend to become less competitive. I used age data from Birkie results to look at how the best skiers have performed over various ages. The following graph shows the same top scoring skiers as the previous graph, but plots them by the age they were as they accumulated points over their careers.

Skiers showing that it's possible to be competitive across a large age range

This shows there are some skiers finishing consistently in the top 50 well into their 50s, as well as one or two stand out skiers who started having top results right away as teenagers and continued into their twenties. As impressive as it is to see someone get good results into their 50s, I realized I was missing some equally stand out performances from older skiers who might not be racking up top 50 performances. Because of that, I went back and looked at the best performance for every age, up to 86 years old, which is the oldest male finisher I found in all editions since 2008. 

Best performance by finishing position for every age

For instances where multiple people of the same age had equal results in different editions of the race, I listed the result from the earlier edition. To get a better visual of how best-ever-performances change across ages I converted the table above into the following graphs:

We see there are quite competitive results from skiers in their 70s still finishing in the top 250 skiers at times, with some more variability in best-ever performances for skiers in their late 70s and 80s. 

After looking at all of these different ways of measuring and visualizing consistency, I’ve personally found greater motivation to keep competing while having something to aspire to. If you’ve stuck with me through this post I hope you’ve found a small piece of inspiration too. 

If you want to see my full google sheet including a few additional graphs and tables feel free to take a look here: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lbQpML62-7OW1xqAYoPgbj_BnQBKOAc0FQstrgcAXPw/edit?usp=sharing

If you have any feedback, questions, ideas, or anything else you want to let me know related to the classic Birkie or skiing in general feel free to reach me by email at leif.a.hanson@gmail.com