Weekly Roundup 04.06.2025

Welcome to April, and after missing a week, we have a special catch-up edition of the round-up. Ultimately, that means an extra dose of all things good and great in the world of sporting visualisation. Enjoy!

We begin the round-up this week with the hugely inspirational London Marathon and this fantastic activity tracker by Zak Saucede. Full of metrics tracking Zak's progress as he builds up to the big day, this makes for a fantastic template for anyone looking to monitor fitness progress.

We move onto tennis now and as spring gets into full swing here in the UK, there's plenty to look forward to over the next couple of months with the French Open and Wimbledon appearing on the horizon.

On the topic of Wimbledon, Deepthi Ruchir has used the Dynamic Zone Visibility functionality in Tableau to create scorecards on each of the Wimbledon finals. The layout is well thought through, especially leaving gaps for tie-break scoring and clicking each of the finals provides full match details. Well done Deepthi!

Radu Coman joins the #romaniandatatribe with this viz focusing on the stellar career of Simona Halep. With two grand slam titles and a top 10 ranking spanning nearly 10 years, including 64 years as #1, Halep truly is a legend of the sport. Radu brings this to life with a brilliant design with a great combination of key metrics and insightful visuals.

More balls (and bats?!) now, but switching continents to North America and the world of Baseball. In this scatterplot, Scott Barber compares the pitching and batting metrics for each team in the MLB from last season. Will those high performers from 2024 be in the same positions this year? We await with interest to find out. Nice use of club crests to indicate the positions, Scott!

It seems we can't go a week without a Chris Westlake viz landing on our desks, and today I bring a bonus two for the price of one! As I mentioned in the March #sportsvizsunday video round-up, Chris has a design style which is unique and instantly recognisable. Mixing quality visuals with an excellent commentary and background, all of Chris's work is accessible to those new to a sport and seasoned fans alike.

First up is an exploration into the history of the home of the Scotland Rugby Union team: Murrayfield. Scanning across the timeline, it's easy to pick out periods of dominance at home vs. times when results were a little more inconsistent. Whenever I travel into Edinburgh from the airport, the tram running right next to Murrayfield is always one of the highlights of the trip.

I'd recommend giving yourself a few minutes with this next viz in which Chris brilliantly attempts to break down the numerous permutations of the final set of matches from this year's Six Nations tournament. Exceptional creativity on show here and no doubt some substantial calculations behind the scenes.

More Tableau functionality on show next as we head to the world of Formula 1 (sidenote: if you haven't seen the Japanese Grand Prix yet and were planning to later on, I'd suggest finding something else to do. It wasn't the most interesting race I've ever seen) and Jacob Rothemund leveraging the brilliant Map Layers to create the starting grid for the resent Australian GP. Super slick with the added details of the times from each qualifying session, this is well worth checking out.

I love it when the creator of a design is also willing to share their thoughts on how the whole piece came together. That's exactly what we have here as Yash Sakhuja takes us through how he created the 2025 Formula 1 track layout calendar. Using a combination of FastF1 API, Python and Tableau, this viz and subsequent blog will provide inspiration for many looking to create this type of design in the future. Shame today's race wasn't so good, Yash!

If you're a fan of long-form style vizzes then look no further as this brilliant design from David Rudkin takes us through the cycling race from Milan to Sanremo. I love the flow of the story as it progresses from the location through a myriad of metrics on both the recent 2025 event but also through the history of the event. Even better than that, though, is the beautiful side-by-side comparison of the Men's and Women's event (revived after a 20-year hiatus).

Last but certainly not least is a design that might help educate some of our younger readers who believe English football began in 1993 with the advent of the Premier League. I can assure you, there was plenty of football played before that, and Joel Reed focuses on one of the most prolific strikers of the pre-premier league era with this story of the legend that is Wolverhampton Wanderers forward Steve Bull.

What an enjoyable round-up this week. Thanks to everyone contributing to and reading our round-ups each week, and keep those vizzes coming.

Simon and the #sportsvizsunday team.