Measurement in speed skating tournaments.

Twenty principal components analyses were performed on the results of 10 European and 10 World male speed skating championships. The first principal component obtained was defined as 'the ability to skate well at all tournament distances'. Therefore the rank order of the participants' skating ability could be estimated in an alternative way to allow validation of the scoring method currently in force. This validity coefficient turned out to be so high (r = 0.967) that it does not seem necessary to adopt a more sophisticated method, despite a few demonstrable shortcomings of the one in use. However, there remains a considerable proportion of variance (10-34%) that can not be explained by systematic aspects of skating ability.