Olympics 2012 Preview

After 7 long years, more than 9 million pounds, nearly 9 million tickets, and the efforts of hundreds and thousands, the day is finally here. London 2012 kicks off in emphatic fashion today with the opening ceremony from 9 tonight, and the general mood in and around London today was one of excitement and optimism, a far change from the cries of boredom, wasted taxpayer money, and security concerns that had littered many minds (including those of yours truly) and papers until just last week.

The only questions for anyone now should be who wins the medals, and the gold medal battle between the two biggest nations on the planet has got many experts scratching heads.  For the last two games, nobody has touched China or the USA, and the bookmakers have it as an each of two contest between the Americans and Chinese. In Being, home advantage finally swung things the way of the Chinese, with a huge team of 639 athletes  racking up an astonishing 51 golds, 15 more than the US, leaving them with 100 in total, just 10 behind the US, who gained the most medals for the third games in a row.

Just a taster of what's to come tonight, taken on Wednesday 

Their team is nearly halved this time around but it’s still one of the highest quality outfits at the games and the major statisticians – Infostrada, Goldman Sachs, Daniel K.N. Johnson, Sports Myriad, Luciano Barra, Price Waterhouse, and the USA Today Olympic medal trackers – all have them winning at least 33 golds once again, and some have them still top of a medal table they romped 4 years ago.

World Championship performances (complicated by Luciano Barra) – which take no account for home advantage, which we will come to later – have China winning 43 golds and while it’s hard to see that happening again, the 7/5 on them topping the table is of interest in what’s a straight shootout.  The 15 medal advantage they have is a lot in hand and that makes the bigger price in a two horse race – any value about the US in the gold medal race went long ago – interesting. But with possibly 40 medals needed to top the rankings, the best bet may well be to take China to win 37 or more golds.

No predictions apart from Barra have them doing so but before Beijing they had won 32 golds successively at each games and it may be that the team sent here – while not the vintage of 2008 – is well capable of beating that target, with quality the emphasis rather than quantity this time around, with the traditional strongholds of table tennis, badminton, diving, gymnastics, shooting and weightlifting looking sure to reap nearly 30 medals once again, while there’s potential for swimming, athletics, judo, boxing and taekwondo to give the final push needed in a gold medal total push. 37 or more will be a hard target to achieve but nobody saw them making 51 last time around and I’d much rather be going above than below the line.

  

The USA will be powerhouses once again and can be comfortably expected to have a gold medal tally in the high 40’s, but they’ve got to be opposed in the betting on value grounds – they’re long odds on for most golds at just 13/20 and are 4/11 for most medals overall – and anyone wanting to get behind them is steered in the direction of Paddy Power’s 5/6 that they can total 103 or more medals, which would be my choice if forced to support the. They have only 66 less athletes in their squad this time around and it makes sense, more so than either of the medal choices.  There’s a slight worry that there’s little margin for error in the price though, and with many US strongholds under attack from all areas, it will be interesting to see if they are quite so dominant as usual. They should be looking to make 100 with ease but the line (as most of the over/unders are this year) is too tight to find any value.

Russia should be a clear third best once again and rack up plenty of medals, but the fight between them and Great Britain for third in the medal table is going to be one of the highlights of the games, with hopes high that Team GB can put up a strong showing and even take third in a medal race according to some. With Russia’s might and GB’s home advantage expect the fight for best of the rest to involve those two despite this being a Germany team high on quality, and much like above, it’s no easy choice deciding which of the two to pick.

The temptation is actually to side with Britain for third place in the medal table, given a record of steady improvement that saw them move into the top 4 well ahead of schedule in Beijing, the result of a decade of hard work and investment from all areas since it was revealed the games were coming to London, where they gained a record gold medal haul tally of 19 golds. Led by the omnipresent (to use one word to describe him) Charles Van Commenee, UK Athletics have gone above and beyond targets set so far, and the peaking effect looks to have come just in time for the games. Home advantage often has a massive effect upon the host nation at these games and with Great Britain only 4 behind Russia in Beijing, the 8/5 on them topping the table without the big two is actually rather tempting. The average rate of increase for the past three hosts in terms of gold medals is 62.33%, they have 541 athletes in 25 sports compared to 311 in 20 last time around, athletics improvement is expected, and the increased efforts since Beijing of UK Athletics can only bring more improvement, so an increased gold medal haul should be well within reach and they look worth supporting in small measures to come third in the medal table, as a swing of only 4 golds is needed and home advantage could easily do that.

On that same score, Russia have to be opposed on the total medals line of 81 with Paddy Power. The Russians are sure to rack up a hatful of medals ranging from 70 upwards, and they may find their traditional gold medal strongholds under attack from hosts Great Britain, while the US and China will obviously dominate the table once again. They gained 72 in Beijing and while they had 92 in total at Athens and 88 in Sydney, China’s squad is stronger now than it was in the earlier part of the century, and targets ranging from 60-80 (including one that had a 97.4 % correlation with the actual medals table of participating countries in the Athens games in 2004 and up to 96.9 % of the Beijing games in 2008) suggest that they can be kept under 81 in the long run.

Advice

`1 pt China to win most gold medals (7/5 Youwin)

3 pts China to win 37 or more gold medals (5/6 Paddy Power)

1 pt GB most gold medals without USA and China (8/5 Paddy Power)

5 pts Russia to win less than 81 medals (5/6 Paddy Power)