Canada is expected to win a total of 22 medals, including six gold, at the Paris Summer Olympics, which open on July 26.
This forecast is provided by Nielsen’s Gracenote Sports, which provides statistical analysis for sports leagues around the world. It also tracks the main Olympic sports competitions leading up to the Games. Gracenote rankings are based on total medals won, although others focus rankings on gold totals.
Canada won 24 medals, including seven gold, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, which were the country’s most successful Games outside of the 44 won at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, which were affected by a boycott led by the Soviets by the Eastern Bloc countries.
The United States and China are expected to finish 1-2 in gold and overall medals at the Paris Olympics, which open in 100 days.
The United States is projected to win 123 total medals, including 39 gold. China is expected to win 35 golds and 89 medals in total. The two also finished 1-2 in both categories three years ago at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics.
This would be the eighth consecutive time the United States has won the most overall medals at the Summer Games. In 1992, in Barcelona, the team called Unificado topped the general classification. Those athletes were from the former Soviet Union, which had just disintegrated as a sovereign state.
The last time the United States did not lead the Summer Games gold medal count was at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where China invested heavily and reaped dividends.
Next in line for overall and gold totals are: Great Britain (66-13), France (55-28), Australia (50-13), Japan (49-13), Italy (47-12), Countries Low (38-18). ), Germany (36-9), South Korea (24-9).
The next 10 are: Canada (22-6), Spain (20-5), Hungary (19-5), Brazil (18-9), Turkey (13-4), Ethiopia (13-3), Uzbekistan (13 -3), Ukraine (13-3), Georgia (12-3) and Denmark (11-5).
Host countries always get an increase in medals, and France is expected to take a big one and increase its overall total from 33 in Tokyo. France is forecast to almost triple its gold medal output in Tokyo, where Japan claimed a record haul.
Performing at home is an advantage, in part because host countries invest more in training athletes. Then, of course, there’s the local crowd that adores him.
France also competes in 25 different sports in Paris, well above its average in the last Olympics of between 15 and 19, according to Gracenote analysis.
The unknown is the presence of Russian and, to a lesser extent, Belarusian athletes. They have been absent from most international competitions in the last two years due to the war in Ukraine. It is difficult to take into account its influence on the prognosis, Gracenote acknowledges.
“It looks like there will be limited participation of these (Russian and Belarusian) athletes,” Gracenote said. She said she hopes her predictions are accurate “based on the data we have.”
Russia and Belarus are banned from participating in team sports at the Olympics because of the war in Ukraine and the International Olympic Committee has established a two-step vetting procedure for individual athletes from those countries to obtain neutral status.
Those athletes must first be approved by the governing body of their individual sport and then by a review panel appointed by the IOC.