Norway leads medal standings at unpredictable Beijing Olympics
BEIJING (AP) — The Beijing Olympics will be unprecedented when they open on Friday in a tightly sealed bubble, filled with COVID-19 testing, extreme health precautions and athletes fearful of testing positive before leaving. home or upon arrival in the Chinese capital.
The possibility of last-minute changes makes predicting the final medal table harder than usual for US-based Gracenote.
Nielsen-Gracenote, which predicted medals at the last Olympics, provides statistical analysis to sports leagues around the world. Its Olympic figures are based on computer models that analyze the most recent results in major – and smaller – competitions in the run-up to the Beijing Games.
Beijing is the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
“Due to the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Beijing Winter Games may be more unpredictable than normal,” Gracenote said in presenting its final forecast. “There is a high likelihood that some competitors currently ranked in our top three will not be able to compete due to a failed COVID test.”
Norway is again the choice to top the medal table with 44 overall and 21 gold medals. That would exceed the 39 medals won by Norway at the Pyeongchang Games in 2018. Gracenote predicts that 28 of Norway’s medals will come in cross-country skiing or biathlon.
Germany and the Russians, known at this year’s Olympics as the ROC, are each expected to score 30 wins in total. Germany is chosen to win 11 gold medals and the ROC 10.
The ROC must compete without its flag or national anthem, the fallout from a state-sponsored doping program and the resulting cover-ups dating back to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Many critics say the punishment is negligible since the athletes still compete under their national colours.
The next seven teams in the top 10 are very tight. The United States and Canada are expected to win 22 medals in total with a slight advantage over the United States with seven gold medals and Canada with six.
After that it is: Switzerland (6 gold medals, 21 in total), the Netherlands (8-20), Sweden (7-19), France (4-19) and Japan (3 -19).
The 10 seconds are: Austria (3-15), China (6-13), Italy (2-13), South Korea (2-7), Australia (3-4), New Zealand (3-3) , Great Britain (2-3), Finland (1-3), Slovakia (1-3) and the Czech Republic (1-3).
Simon Gleave, head of sports analysis for Gracenote, said the aim was to identify the top 10 countries, and preferably in the correct order.
The Beijing Olympics have been shrouded in controversy with the United States and several other countries refusing to send high-ranking political officials to Beijing. At the heart are allegations of crimes against humanity that primarily target ethnic Muslim minorities in the northwest region of Xinjiang.
___
More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports