The athletes pictures are from the IBU website.
The ratings are taken from all of an athlete's individual races in the current season (which gives the 'Regular' cards for each season), and weighted by the ratings from the previous season.
Thus, the races of the junior/youth world championships, the European championships, the IBU Cup count just as much as the world cup races (with the exception of athletes who have completed more than twice as many world cup races as IBU Cup races to avoid unrepresentative drops linked to illness and/or return from injury).
Special cards for a major championship only take into account the races of that championship, the other cards take the base notes and boost certain statistics (based on the races of the last week for the Athletes of the week for example).
The ratings are not an indicator of an athlete's performance or level, simply a mathematical translation of the athlete's individual statistics.
The possible variation between the overall ranking and the athlete's average score can be explained by the following points:
- a different number of races
- illnesses that ruined a weekend performances
- since the scores are based on statistical aspects, they can be closer to the average ranking per race than to the general ranking where the distribution of points is non-linear (and where a 41st place earns as many points as a 90th)...
The ski score is based on the difference from the median (there are conversions for circuits other than the World Cup), sprint and endurance on average ski times depending on the format, shooting speed on shooting time and prone/standing on accuracy percentage.
There is no human modification in the rating process : all is automatic and mathematic !
Some athlete statistics displayed on personal pages may be outdated, these depend on the IBU data being updated and then our update process.
It's still under construction, you can track the progress here.