US, China Are Expected to Win the Most Medals at Paris Olympics

The United States and China are expected to finish 1-2 in the gold and the overall medal counts at the Paris Olympics, which open in 100 days.
The United States is projected to win 123 medals overall, including 39 golds. China is projected to win 35 gold and 89 medals overall, The Associated Press reported. The two also finished 1-2 in both categories three years ago in the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics.
This forecast is done by Nielsen’s Gracenote Sports, which supplies statistical analysis for sports leagues around the world, AP said. It also tracks major competitions involving Olympic sports leading up to the Games.
Gracenote's rankings are based on overall medals won, although others focus the rankings on gold totals.
This would be the eighth straight time the United States has won the most overall medals in the Summer Games. In 1992 at Barcelona, the so-called Unified team topped the overall count. Those athletes were from the former Soviet Union, which had just broken up as a sovereign state.
The last time the United States did not top the gold-medal count in the Summer Games was in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where China invested heavily and saw dividends.
Next in line with overall and gold totals are: Britain (66-13), France (55-28), Australia (50-13), Japan (49-13), Italy (47-12), Netherlands (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 nations always get a bump in medals, and France is expected to get a big one and increase its overall total from 33 in Tokyo. France is forecast to nearly triple its gold-medal output from Tokyo, where Japan picked up a record haul.
Performing at home is an advantage, partly because host nations invest more heavily in training athletes. Then, of course, there are adoring home crowds.
France is also competing in 25 different sports in Paris, far above its average in recent Olympics of between 15 and 19, according to Gracenote's analysis.
The unknown factor is the presence of Russian and — to a lesser extent — Belarussian athletes. They have been absent from most international competitions over the last two years because of the war in Ukraine. Their influence is difficult to factor into the forecast, Gracenote acknowledges.
“It appears that there will be limited participation of these athletes (Russian and Belarussian),” Gracenote said. It said it expects its predictions to be accurate “based on the data that we have.”
Russia and Belarus are barred from team sports at the Olympics because of the war in Ukraine and the International Olympic Committee has laid out a two-step vetting procedure for individual athletes from those countries to be granted neutral status.
Those athletes must first be approved by the governing body of their individual sport and then by an IOC-appointed review panel.

The Paris Olympics look likely to get off to a soggy start.

Meteo-France, the French weather service, is predicting “flooding rains” Friday evening when the opening ceremony is set to unroll along the Seine River. But the show is set to go on as planned, starting at 1:30 p.m. EDT/7:30 p.m. CEST and should last more than three hours.

Already in the late afternoon, skies were gray with intermittent drizzle. There was a silver lining, though, with temperatures expected to stay relatively warm throughout the evening.

Instead of a traditional march into a stadium, about 6,800 athletes will parade on more than 90 boats on the Seine River for 6 kilometers (3.7 miles). Though 10,700 athletes are expected to compete at these Olympics, hundreds of soccer players are based outside Paris, surfers are in Tahiti and many have yet to arrive for their events in the second week, organizers said Thursday.

Hundreds of thousands of people, including 320,000 paying and invited ticket-holders, are expected to line the Seine’s banks as athletes are paraded along the river on boats.

US, China Are Expected to Win the Most Medals at Paris Olympics