User:Seattle Skier/Test2

Test page for various edits

Nations Cup
The Nations Cup standings are calculated by adding up the point totals each season for all racers from a given nation.

The early years of the World Cup were largely dominated by the French ski team, as reflected in their Nations Cup wins in 5 of the first 6 years. The Austrian team then took over throughout the rest of the 1970s, followed by Swiss superiority during most of the 1980s. A resurgent Austrian team charged back to the top in 1990, beginning a long streak of conscutive Nations Cup triumphs. Austrian dominance reached its zenith in the late 1990s and 2000s, when their point total regularly doubled that of the second place finisher, and was capped in the 1999–2000 and 2003–4 seasons with totals that tripled those of runner-up Italy. Their 17927 point total in 1999–2000 is a Nations Cup record, as is their 12066 point margin of victory in 2003–4.

As of the end of the 2005–6 season, the Austrian team had won 17 consecutive Nations Cups, while topping the men's standings for 14 straight years and the women's for 8 in a row. In the midst of the ongoing Austrian juggernaut, the Swiss or Italian teams have usually held second place. The German team reached the runner-up spot for the first time in 1997–8, as did the Norwegians the next season. The USA enjoyed its best placings ever starting in 2004–5, grabbing second in the Nations Cup for two straight years.

Under the current scoring system, the winning nation (Austria every year) has averaged over 12900 points, with an average of 6400 for the runner-up, 5400 for third place, 4200 for fifth, and 1300 for tenth. The all-inclusive scoring system (simply adding together all World Cup points earned) favors national teams with great depth and many racers scoring World Cup points, and even teams with several top racers have no realistic chance of breaking the Austrian grip on the top spot, while a team with only one or two top-ranked racers will struggle to ever break the top five in the standings. There have been numerous calls for a revamped scoring system which would allow other nations to compete more readily for top spots in the Nations Cup, but no changes are likely to be made.

The total number of top-three placings for each nation in the Nations Cup (through the 2005–6 season) are summarized below: NOTE: Results for West Germany and Germany are counted together in this table.

Nations which have won World Cup races
The table below lists those nations which have won at least 1 World Cup race (as of February 22, 2007).

''NOTE: Results for West Germany and Germany are counted together in this table. All of Yugoslavia's wins are currently lumped in with Slovenia, since the skiers who won races for Yugoslavia all ended their careers racing for Slovenia, and thus are listed under Slovenia in online databases. The Soviet Union and Russia are counted separately.''

A total of 22 countries have won World Cup races, with 19 different countries winning men's and women's races. As expected, the top 9 nations in this list match the 9 nations listed in the Nations Cup summary table.

Some interesting tidbits can be found in the data: Marc Girardelli accounted for all of Luxembourg's 46 wins, while Janica Kostelić has 30 of Croatia's 38 (her brother Ivica has the rest) and Ingemar Stenmark still has nearly one-half of Sweden's 177 wins more than a decade after his retirement. Some nation's specialize in either speed (downhill and Super G) or technical (Slalom and GS) disciplines, while others are strong across the board. Among nations with 30+ wins, the Canadian team has won 70% of its races in speed events, while Yugoslavia/Slovenia has won 94% and Sweden 91% of their races in technical events, especially remarkable in Sweden's case given its huge total of 177 wins. Several nations with under 20 wins have 100% of them in technical events, led by Finland and Spain. In contrast Germany and Norway have the most even distribution without disproportionate strength or weakness in any one discipline. Some nations have strong teams in only one gender, as 91% of Norway's wins have come from their men and 83% of Germany's from their women, while the American total is split almost equally.