Pursuit racing
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Pursuit racing is where two or more competitors (or teams) are either chasing after each other or chasing after a lead competitor or team.
In Biathlon and Cross country skiing, this is the second part of a Sprint-Pursuit race where the Sprint winner will start first, whoever started second by a certain time will follow the leader by that time (e.g., 1st finished 5 seconds ahead of the 2nd in the Sprint event so 1st will start 5 seconds ahead of 2nd in the Pursuit event.).
In Nordic combined, the pursuit is determined how well the competitors or team do in the ski jumping part of the competition. This is part of the Gundersen method developed in the 1980's. For the 15 km individual and 7.5 km sprint competitions, the computation is a 1 point advantage at the ski jump equals a 4 second advantage at the start of the cross country skiing part of the competition (e.g., Competitor A finished with 5 more points that Competitor B in the ski jump, so Competitor B must start 20 seconds after Competitor A in the cross country skiing portion of the Nordic combined.). For the 4 x 5 km team event prior to 2005, the computation is a 1 point advantage at the skip jum equals a 1.5 second advantage in the cross country skiing part of the competition. Since 2005, that computation is one point equals one second.
In cycling pursuit racing is a form of track racing, see:
Short- and long-track speed skating also have pursuit races.
