Was Sweden’s Waxing Really a Total Failure? Analyzing the Women’s Relay in Oberstdorf

I the newspapers it was labeled a complete waxing disaster, and the wax chief publicly took the blame. But is that the whole explanation? If the athletes had been skiing with a power meter, we would have had the answer instantly!

Since we do not have that luxury, we instead made a simple calculation to understand how much slower Charlotte Kalla’s skis must have been to lose almost one and a half minutes on her leg. Assuming she had the same physical capacity and pushed just as hard as Heidi Weng that day, our calculation shows that her skis must have had 47% higher friction than Weng’s. The estimate is based on actual lap times and basic mechanics that we have explained in previous analyses on the Skisens website[1].

What does 47% worse glide actually mean?

To understand the magnitude of 47% slower skis, we can relate it to previous measurement data from the Skisens power-measuring handles. In rough terms, this corresponds to the difference between fresh, cold snow and hard, fast tracks. For roller skiers, it resembles the difference between #2 and #4 wheels from the same brand — not an unreasonable performance gap between very good and very bad skis.

Whether it is possible for a professional waxing team to miss this badly is something we leave to the experts to judge. From our perspective, we hope that the explanation truly was the wax – and we wish the women the best of luck with skis and form ahead of the 30 km!

[1] https://skisens.se/2020/01/25/vilken-snitteffekt-haller-taten-i-marcialonga-final-climb/