How Hard Is It to Advance a Starting Wave in Vasaloppet? A Statistical Look at Wave Progression

As we continue waiting for snow in southern Sweden, we entertain ourselves with more Vasaloppet statistics. Earlier, we analyzed how many performance medals are awarded each year and discussed how external conditions influence the medal cutoff. The conclusion was clear: the Vasaloppet medal is a goal heavily dependent on uncontrollable factors. In this post, we look instead at alternative goals for those who want more than just enjoying the race and reaching the finish line.

One of the most performance-neutral and comparable goals is aiming for a specific placement. To normalize the challenge across skiers, we can phrase the question as: How hard is it to advance one starting wave? And how does this depend on which wave you start in? How does it vary from year to year?

How Many Skiers Start in Each Wave?

A key factor is how many skiers start in each wave. Table 1 shows the nominal starting-wave boundaries based on the previous year’s Vasaloppet results. The real number is always larger and varies depending on how many skiers are seeded into each wave. Figure 1 shows the number of starters per wave (wave 0–6) over the past six years.

Table 1. Starting waves based on previous year’s Vasaloppet placements.

Figure 1. Number of skiers per wave (a) and number of skiers ahead of the last skier in each wave (b).

In Figure 1 we see that in 2014–2016 significantly more skiers were seeded into waves 0–6 compared with 2017, which had fewer skiers per wave. In the years after, the number of seeded skiers increased again. Waves 0 and 1 had roughly the same number of seeded skiers in 2019 as in 2014–2016, while waves 2–4 still had somewhat fewer starters.

From Figure 1(a) we can see that the wave with the highest percentage of seeded skiers relative to its nominal size is wave 0, with on average 250 starters — compared to the nominal 150 skiers according to Table 1. This means it is statistically difficult to defend your place in wave 0. We can also see that more skiers are seeded into wave 2 than wave 1. On average, 740 skiers started in wave 2 compared with 440 in wave 1, meaning those waves increased by 48% and 26% respectively. Waves 3 and 4 were expanded by roughly 12% on average, with even more additional skiers seeded into waves 5 and 6.

The conclusion: a skier starting at the very back of their wave must overtake quite a few skiers just to defend their starting wave for the following year.

How Many Skiers Actually Manage to Advance a Wave?

How many wave-1 skiers manage to reach wave 0 the next year? How many wave-2 skiers reach wave 1? Is any wave easier to advance into? Figure 2 shows how many skiers from waves 0–4 manage to place within the top 150, top 500, top 1000, and top 2000.

Figure 2. Number of skiers per starting wave who place within the top 150, 500, 1000, and 2000.

Figure 2 shows that skiers who successfully qualify into a wave almost always started at most one wave behind. Advancing two waves is extremely rare in the top four waves. Two years clearly stand out:

• 2015: Advancing a wave was significantly easier from wave 1 → 0, wave 2 → 1, and wave 3 → 2.
• 2016: The opposite was true — it was unusually hard to advance, especially wave 3 → 2 and wave 4 → 3, and to some extent wave 2 → 1.

2017, the year with the fewest seeded skiers per wave, does not stand out significantly — except that slightly more skiers than average advanced from wave 1 → 0, while slightly fewer than average advanced in the other waves.

What Percentage of Skiers Advance or Defend Their Wave?

Figure 3 shows the percentage of skiers from each wave who achieve the required placement.

Figure 3. Share of skiers from each wave who place within the top 150, 500, 1000, or 2000.

From Figure 3, we see that in 2017 (the year with the fewest seeded skiers) a larger share of skiers successfully defended their starting wave regardless of wave — but not a larger share advanced. Meanwhile, 2016 (the year with the most seeded skiers) made it unusually difficult to defend a position in waves 2 and 3, and extremely difficult to advance. The difficulty in 2016 can be explained by the large number of seeded skiers combined with conditions that made overtaking difficult — the groomed tracks were much faster than the areas beside them.

Conclusion: How Hard Is It to Advance a Starting Wave in Vasaloppet?

Statistically, advancing a wave in Vasaloppet is quite difficult. Among skiers starting in waves 0–4, fewer than 8% advance a wave in a typical year. The hardest wave progression is wave 1 → wave 0. The easiest is wave 4 → wave 3. Interestingly, slightly more skiers advance wave 2 → wave 1 than wave 3 → wave 2, which aligns with how many skiers are seeded into each wave.

A realistic goal for many is simply to defend their starting wave. About 50% of skiers starting in waves 0–4 accomplish this each year.

Advancing two waves is an extremely tough goal. Typically only one or two wave-4 skiers manage to reach wave 2, and even fewer wave-3 skiers reach wave 1. No wave-2 skier has advanced all the way to wave 0 during the past six years.

/Dan