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
AQUATICS – At the conclusion of the 2015 Aquatics World Championships, China have emerged as the most successful country winning 15 gold medals, 10 silver medals and 10 bronze medals. For the first time since 2001 (Australia), United States do not top the overall table.
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%.
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.
FORMULA 1 – Lewis Hamilton won his third successive Grand Prix victory by taking the chequered flag in China. It was the first threepeat in Hamilton’s career which started in 2007. It was the Briton’s 25th career race win in F1, making him join Jim Clark and Niki Lauda in eighth place all-time. Hamilton is the first to win this GP three times, the first to finish on the podium in this race six times and the second to lead it from start to finish (Fernando Alonso, 2005).
FORMULA 1 – On Sunday, the Grand Prix of China will take place for the 10th time. The previous nine races have been won by eight different drivers, making this the most diverse winners’ circle among Grands Prix that are currently on the F1 calendar. Our Infographic shows where each race stands.
Note: Grand Prix of India does not qualify, because it has had only one winner (in two races)
OLYMPIC GAMES – China won gold in table tennis women’s singles for the seventh consecutive Olympic Games on Wednesday to equal the longest running streak at the Games by any NOC in any sport. In fact, China has won this discipline at every Olympic Games since its inception in 1988. Below we list the longest running Olympic gold streaks.
ATHLETICS – Liu Xiang is 29 years old today. The frontrunner of Chinese athletics will again be among the favourites for the Men’s 100m Hurdles in London, much as he was at the start of the 2008 Beijing Games. Then the darling of the local fans, he withdrew injured just days before the race. In London, he will look for an encore to his 2004 Athens gold medal winning campaign.
Shares birthday with: Erno Rubik, Harrison Ford, Cameron Crowe
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