Germany, Norway top medal table; Canada to win 31
Simon Gleave is piecing together results from his statistical model to predict the top medal-winning countries for next year’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
He has one large problem: will Russia be in, or out, or somewhere in between?
Gleave, the head of analysis for Gracenote Sports, has created a virtual medal table on the assumption that Russia’s full team will participate and not be subject to a doping ban.
“At the moment we assume with everything we’re doing that Russia is in,” Gleave said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The International Olympic Committee said it hopes to decide on Russian eligibility in December with the Olympics opening on Feb. 9. But it may drag right up to the eve of the games, as it did last year in Rio de Janeiro.
On Wednesday, Olympic officials in Pyeongchang marked 100 days to go until the opening ceremony.
With Russia in, Gleave predicts that Germany will win the most gold medals, and the most overall. Germany is predicted to win 14 golds and 35 overall, followed by Norway with 12 gold and 32 overall.
The United States is next with 10 gold and 29 overall. Canada is predicted to win 31 overall, more than the Americans but with fewer gold.
The Canadian Olympic Committee has not publicly stated its goal for Pyeongchang. The Canadian team took home 25 medals from the Sochi Olympics, including 10 gold.
Gleave is projecting just five Canadian golds this time.
Gleave projects those golds to come from men’s and women’s curling, freestyle skier Mikael Kingsbury, snowboarder Max Parrot and the men’s hockey team. He’s predicting Canada’s championship run in women’s hockey will end with the U.S. stealing away the gold in Pyeongchang. He also has two-time gold medallist bobsledder Kaillie Humphries finishing second.
After Germany, Norway and the United States, the top 10 in the gold medals are: France (9), Austria (7), South Korea (7), Netherlands (6), Russia (6) and China (6).
If Russia is out, Gracenote figures the 21 overall medals would be distributed among 11 different countries. The big winners would be Germany and the Netherlands.
Its six gold medals would go to the Netherlands (2) with one each for Canada, Germany, Japan and Norway.
Accustomed to dealing with the unpredictable, Gleave said there is another dark spot.
Men’s hockey will be tougher to predict, since NHL players will not participate. That leaves him relying on results from recent world championships.
“The strong countries in ice hockey are the strong countries in ice hockey — whether it’s their first teams playing or their second teams,” he said. But he acknowledged his picks for men’s hockey will not be “as strong” as in other events.
He predicts Canada will defeat Sweden in the gold-medal game while Russia will take bronze.
To get his predictions for all sports, Gleave weighs results in recent world championships and other world-class events, giving more weight to the most recent.
In the case of winter sports, most seasons are just beginning. Gleave said he expects “minor changes” when he calculates the standings again in January with a month to go.
“It won’t change enormously,” Gleave said. “But there will be changes.”
At last year’s Rio Olympics, Gleave said 80 per cent of the eventual medallists came from a top-eight list he compiled for every discipline. He said he expected the same for Pyeongchang.
This is Gleave’s fourth analysis, which he began for the 2012 London Olympics as a project of Britain’s “The Times” newspaper.
He’s now doing it for Gracenote, which bills itself as a “sports and entertainment provider” that supplies statistical analysis for sports leagues around the world.
“We develop it as we go along to try to make some improvements,” he said. “But improvements in this are only very tiny. It’s very difficult to predict the unpredictable, which is obviously what makes sport most interesting.”