 Here's a fresh set of Olympic medal predictions | | | Competition at the Paris Olympic Games begins exactly three weeks from today. It's kind of a soft launch, as we say in the media business, with a handful of preliminary-stage men's soccer and men's rugby sevens games kicking things off on Wednesday, July 24, followed by women's soccer (including Canada vs. New Zealand), archery, handball and more men's rugby sevens the next day. The opening ceremony is on Friday, July 26. Then it's off to the races, literally, as swimming highlights the first full day of competition on Saturday.
Anyway, this seems like a good time to check in on the latest Olympic medal projections from our friends at Nielsen's Gracenote (a division of the company that measures TV ratings). Their model crunches the results from various world championships, World Cups, Grand Prixs and other important competitions to predict the medal winners for all 329 events in Paris.
Gracenote's previous forecast, back in April, had Canada winning 22 medals — six gold, seven silver and nine bronze. That would match the country's second-highest total ever for a non-boycotted Summer Games (alongside Atlanta 1996 and Rio 2016) and fall two short of the non-boycott-record 24 medals Canada won three years ago in Tokyo, which included seven gold.
The new projections, released last week, drop Canada down to 20 medals. The good news is that the gold count remains at six and the silver increases to nine, but the bronze falls to five.
So, what's changed?
For the gold medals, not much. Gracenote's model still has swimming phenom Summer McIntosh winning both of her best events (the 400m individual medley and 200m butterfly) and 800m runner Marco Arop, judoka Christa Deguchi and break dancer Philip Kim (aka Phil Wizard) taking gold in theirs. The only change is in the decathlon, where Canadians Pierce LePage and Damian Warner have flipped positions. Warner is now projected to repeat as Olympic champion while LePage, the reigning world champ, falls to silver.
Unfortunately, that might be too optimistic an outlook for LePage. He missed last week's Canadian track and field trials due to an unspecified injury that has prevented him from competing for virtually the entire outdoor season. LePage was still named to the Olympic team, but it's fair to wonder whether he'll be fit enough to contend for a medal — or even make the trip to Paris.
Even if LePage can't go, Canada looks poised for a lot of medals in track and field. Along with the golds for Warner and Arop, Gracenote is still predicting silver and bronze for reigning hammer throw world champions Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg while upgrading shot putter Sarah Mitton and the men's 4x100m relay team from bronze to silver.
On the down side, the model still thinks relay anchor Andre De Grasse won't win a medal in the individual 100m or 200m, even though he's the defending Olympic champ in the latter and has never missed the podium in an Olympic event.
The model might also be underestimating Katzberg. He came out of nowhere to win gold at the world championships last year, but the now 22-year-old looks like the real deal. Katzberg is undefeated in 2024 and owns the three farthest throws in the world this year. His best (a North American record 84.38m in April) is almost three metres clear of anyone else's. Meanwhile, Rogers' chances for the Olympic women's gold improved recently when world leader Brooke Andersen fouled out at the U.S. trials and failed to qualify for Paris. Removing the 2022 world champion, Rogers has the two best throws of the year.
While Canada is projected to win the same number of track and field medals (seven) as it was in the April forecast, Gracenote cut the swimming total from six medals to four. McIntosh should have a hand in all of them: in addition to her pair of gold in the projections, she'll presumably be part of the women's 4x100m freestyle and 4x100m medley relay teams that are tapped to take bronze. But the 17-year-old sensation went from a bronze in the 200m individual medley in the April forecast to off the podium in the new one. Reigning Olympic 100m butterfly champ Maggie Mac Neil also lost her bronze slot.
Another downer: the Canadian women's soccer team, whose surprising gold-medal victory in Tokyo was probably the highlight of the 2021 Games in this country, is projected to miss the podium for the first time since 2008. The forecast also has the rising men's basketball team falling short of the medals despite its historic bronze at last year's Basketball World Cup. The women's eight rowing team is projected for bronze after its thrilling Olympic gold-medal win three years ago.
To end on some more positive things in the Canadian medal predictions, canoeist Katie Vincent is still projected for two silvers; Canada is expected to win its first artistic (formerly synchronized) swimming medal in 24 years; and the model says Tammara Thibeault will capture Canada's first boxing medal since the late David Defiagbon's heavyweight silver in 1996.
Here's the full list of Canada's projected medals from the latest Gracenote release:
Gold
Swimming: Summer McIntosh (women's 200m butterfly)
Swimming: Summer McIntosh (women's 400m IM)
Track and field: Marco Arop (men's 800m)
Track and field: Damian Warner (decathlon)
Breaking: Philip Kim (B-Boys)
Judo: Christa Deguchi (women's 57kg)
Silver
Track and field: Men's 4x100m relay team
Track and field: Pierce LePage (decathlon)
Track and field: Camryn Rogers (women's hammer throw)
Track and field: Sarah Mitton (women's shot put)
Boxing: Tammara Thibeault (women's 75kg)
Canoe sprint: Katie Vincent (women's single)
Canoe sprint: Katie Vincent and Sloan MacKenzie (women's double)
Judo: Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard (women's 53kg)
Artistic swimming: team event
Bronze
Swimming: Women's 4x100m freestyle relay team
Swimming: Women's 4x100m medley relay team
Track and field: Ethan Katzberg (men's hammer throw)
Rowing: Women's eight
Judo: Shady Elnahas (men's 100 kg) | | |  | Canadian track star Marco Arop is projected to capture the Olympic men's 800m title after winning gold at the world championships last year. (Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images) | | | Quickly… | | | Some other things to know:
1. In an NHL first, the Seattle Kraken are putting a woman behind the bench.
Canadian Jessica Campbell became the NHL's first full-fledged assistant coach today when Seattle hired her onto Dan Bylsma's staff. The Washington Capitals hired Emily Engel-Natzke as a full-time video coach in 2022, but Campbell will be the first woman to work behind an NHL bench during regular-season games.
Campbell, 32, spent the past two seasons working with Bylsma for Seattle's minor-league affiliate in Coachella Valley, where she was the first woman behind the bench in the American Hockey League. Before that, Campbell played in the NCAA and the Canadian Women's Hockey League and spent time with the Canadian women's national team, earning a silver medal at the 2015 world championship. Read more about her here.
2. Canadian men's soccer standout Tajon Buchanan has a broken leg.
Canada Soccer confirmed that the 25-year-old winger had surgery today to repair a fractured tibia (shinbone) suffered during yesterday's practice. The training session in Fort Worth, Texas, where Canada is preparing for its Copa America quarterfinal against Venezuela, was cut short after an ambulance took Buchanan away.
Buchanan has four goals in 40 matches for the Canadian national team and appeared in all three preliminary-round matches at the Copa. Canada went 1-1-1 to finish second in Group A in its debut at the South American championship, which this year is being hosted by the United States and includes guest teams from North and Central America and the Caribbean.
The Canadians, ranked 48th in the world, will face No. 54 Venezuela on Friday at 9 p.m. ET at the Dallas Cowboys' stadium in Arlington, Texas. Venezuela went a perfect 3-0-0 to win its group.
Buchanan left Belgium's Club Brugge last winter to join Inter Milan, becoming the first Canadian to play in Italy's Serie A.
3. Bianca Andreescu continued her comeback with another Wimbledon win.
Ranked 176th in the world after missing close to a year with a back injury, the 2019 U.S. Open champion upset 26th-seeded Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic today to reach the third round of the grass-court major.
Andreescu, who opened the grass season with a runner-up finish in the Netherlands, will face seventh-seeded Italian Jasmine Paolini on Friday as she tries to advance past Wimbledon's third round for the first time.
Canada's Leylah Fernandez, seeded 30th, plays 2018 Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark in the second round on Thursday. Nineteen-year-old Canadian qualifier Marina Stakusic lost in the first round yesterday in her Grand Slam debut.
On the men's side, 17th-seeded Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime blew a two-set lead and lost to 93rd-ranked Thanasi Kokkinakis of Australia today. The match was suspended due to darkness yesterday with Auger-Aliassime up two sets to one.
Denis Shapovalov, ranked 121st, was scheduled to meet unseeded Daniel Altmaier of Germany today after upsetting No. 19 Nicolas Jarry of Chile in the opening round, but the match was pushed back to Thursday.
Wimbledon is the last Grand Slam event before the Olympics. Auger-Aliassime, Fernandez, Andreescu and doubles specialist Gabriela Dabrowski are going to Paris along with 155th-ranked Milos Raonic, who did not get a Wimbledon entry. | | | And finally… | | | Say hi to A.I. Al Michaels.
Do you believe in bleeding-edge technologies that may or may not lead to the destruction of mankind? Yes? Then you'll be thrilled to hear that the iconic American sports broadcaster who called the 1980 Miracle on Ice will be covering the Paris Olympics. Or at least an Artificial Intelligence version of him will.
Michaels, 79, told Vanity Fair that he was "very skeptical" when NBC first approached him about using A.I. to recreate his voice for its coverage of the Paris Summer Games. But he signed off after hearing it for himself. “Frankly, it was astonishing. It was amazing,” said Michaels, who has worked the Olympics, World Series and Super Bowls for NBC and now calls Thursday night NFL games on Amazon Prime Video. “And it was a little bit frightening.”
For the upcoming Olympics, Michaels' voice will be used for a feature on Peacock, NBC's streaming platform. Users can create customized daily recaps of their favourite events, narrated by Michaels in the form of an A.I. model trained to sound like him. If you want to go deeper on how it all works, here's the Vanity Fair story. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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