So who is the most dominant Olympian of the Vancouver Games so far?
A round of applause, please, for Switzerland's Simon Ammann, who whipped the competition in both individual ski jump events, and, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of results, gave the Olympics' second-most-dominant performance when he conquered the large hill.
To figure out how much stronger the leader of each sport is than the average participant in the event, we compared the winning time or score with the number of standard deviations from the mean. This is basically a statistical way of leveling the playing field. Indeed, Mr. Ammann's gold came in second, with a margin of 2.02, trailing only Vincent Jay's gold medal in the men's 10-kilometer sprint biathlon. However, the Frenchman had Mother Nature on his side and probably would not have won had it not been for a freak snowstorm in the middle of the race. Mr. Jay started early in a race with a staggered start and was essentially finished by the time the snow was slowing down the field.
The formula also shows just how slim the margin is between glory and misery in the Olympics. According to the analysis, the tightest field was in the women's 500-meter speed-skating race in which Korea's Lee Sang-hwa won by a microscopic 0.05 second. Meanwhile, Canadian Jon Montgomery will never pay for another drink on home soil after his gold in skeleton, but his razor-thin 0.07-second victory over Latvia's Martins Dukurs scored a 0.41 on our dominance scale (the second smallest). That 0.07 second might have been the difference between being on your home track or 7,000 miles from home.
Matthew Futterman
Write to Matthew Futterman at matthew.futterman@wsj.com
Margin Calls
To figure out which athletes won their event in the most dominant fashion, we determined who won by the highest number of standard deviations from the mean of the field.
Most Dominant
Gold Medalists*
Victory Margin
Deviations From Mean
Vincent Jay, FRA
10K Sprint Biathlon
+12.2 s
2.13
Simon Ammann, SUI
Large Hill Ski Jumping
+14.2 pts.
2.02
Emil Hegle Svendsen, NOR, 20K Ind. Biathlon
+ 9.5 s
1.96
Martina Sablikova, CZE
3000m Speedskating
+2.09 s
1.93
Shani Davis, USA
1000m Speedskating
+0.18 s
1.81
*Individual events through Monday
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D10
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