USA, China and Russia Top Medal Counts,
Spain, Argentina, Italy and Ukraine Show Steady Declines
EMERYVILLE, Calif., April 26, 2016 – Gracenote®, the world’s leading provider of entertainment data and subsidiary of Tribune Media Company (NYSE: TRCO), is using its sports data expertise to predict which countries and athletes will step up at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games if the games were held today.
GENERAL – Australia has moved into fourth position in the Infostrada Sports’ Virtual Medal Table (VMT) after the inclusion of athletics and swimming personal bests since May 2015 took projected golds away from Germany and Great Britain and added four medals to Australia’s forecast total. Continue reading
SWIMMING – With only one day of competition left at the 2015 Swimming World Championships in Kazan, the United States have reclaimed their leading position in the Market Share (metric that weights all ranks) table, but only by a very small margin. Like we reported earlier this week, their position is being challenged by traditional rivals Australia, China and France, but also the strong emerging force that is Great Britain. For comparison, the US had a market share of nearly 50% only eight years ago, now that has been reduced to 20%.
SWIMMING – At the 2015 World Swimming Championships in Kazan, Russia, Australia and Great Britain have shown their intent to knock the United States off their perch as the world’s leading nation in swimming. After three days of competition they have a greater market share, a metric that weights all ranks, than the US.
FOOTBALL – The FIFA World rankings for women’s football have provided a good basis for our forecast so far with seven of our eight favourites in the second round progressing through to the quarter-finals. In addition, our pre-tournament forecast correctly predicted six of the eight quarter-finalists, and two of the exact match-ups (France v Germany and England v Canada) in this round. Our updated forecast for the quarter-final matches expects the United States to play Germany and Japan to play Canada in the last four. These exact semi-final pairings were also predicted in our pre-tournament forecast.
FOOTBALL – Germany are the favourites for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, but only just, according to a new analysis from Infostrada Sports. The United States are second favourites and there is nearly 50% chance of the winners being one or the other of these two teams. They are, however, most likely to meet each other at the semi-final stage of the competition.
FOOTBALL – The 2015 African Cup of Nations begins in Equatorial Guinea on Saturday, 17 January and will be running alongside the 2015 Asian Cup which started eight days earlier in Australia. With 32 teams playing at these two continental tournaments, we set out to discover which has the strongest field of teams.
HOCKEY – Argentina’s star player Luciana Aymar is chasing a record sixth victory in the Champions Trophy. Argentina are also aiming for their sixth, which would equal all-time record holders Netherlands and Australia. Continue reading
RUGBY UNION – The following is a preview for this Saturday’s matches in The Rugby Championship. South Africa host New Zealand and Australia travel to Argentina.
RUGBY UNION – The following is a preview for this Saturday’s matches in The Rugby Championship. South Africa host Australia and New Zealand travel to Argentina.
sportsdesklive.wordpress.com 