Predictions for the Paris Olympics
Romania is placed 25th in a virtual ranking of the countries taking part in the Paris Olympics.
Ştefan Stoica, 19.04.2024, 13:50
We have 3 months left until the world’s top sports event, the summer Olympics, scheduled to take place in Paris between July 26 and August 11.
Although overshadowed by a war that has reached its 3rd year in Ukraine and by a volatile situation in the Middle East, the Olympics stir well-deserved interest, including in terms of statistics.
Experts have set out to produce a predicted medal table for the Paris Olympics, with the number of medals each country is expected to win. According to this ranking, released recently by Nielsen Gracenote, Romania is forecast to win 10 medals, of which two gold, three silver and five bronze ones. The country would thus come out 25th in the ranking by total number of medals.
Should this projection come true, this would make Romania’s best performance in the past 5 editions of the summer Olympics, after the 9 medals won in Beijing 2008, 7 in London 2012 and 4 each in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.
At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Romania won a total of 19 medals. But all these pale in comparison to Romania’s exceptional performance at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. With 53 medals (20 gold, 16 silver, and 17 bronze) Romania ranked second in the nations’ table, after the US.
According to the Gracenote predictions, the US team will dominate the Paris Game as well, with a forecast 123 medals, followed by China, with 89 medals and the UK with 66. The host country, France, is expected to win 55 medals. In a standing taking into account gold medals only, France ranks 3rd, after the US and China. While Russia and Belarus will not take part in the competitions, for obvious reasons, Ukraine is predicted to take home 13 medals.
The predicted medal table is a projection based on team and individual results in the previous Olympic Games, the World Championships and the World Cups, to establish the most likely medal winners from each country.
Romania so far has 80 athletes qualified for the Paris Games, in events including athletics, swimming, boxing, rowing, kayaking, artistic and rhythmic gymnastics, water polo, table tennis, wrestling and weightlifting.
Octavian Morariu, a member of the International Olympic Committee and of the Romanian Executive Olympic and Sports Committee, says the 10-medal forecast for Romania may be realistic, but should not be taken for granted. “There are events where we have really good chances to win medals, for instance rowing, swimming, weightlifting, wrestling, canoeing. So this is what we should pin our hopes on, at the Paris Olympics,” Morariu said. He argued that these are the events in which Romanians have had good results lately and which are an indication of what could be achieved this summer. (AMP)
