South Africa's Akani Simbine celebrates winning the 100m Men during the Diamond League athletics meeting on June 10, 2021 at the Asics Firenze Marathon Luigi-Ridolfi stadium in Florence Akani Simbine could be one of the top medal prospects for Team SA at the Paris Olympics. Picture: Tiziana Fabi Fabi/AFP
You heard it here first, Team SA will win nine medals at the Paris Olympics.
That’s according to the Paris 2024 Supercomputer compiled by data experts at OLBG. With their nine-medal tally, South Africa will rank 35th on the medal table with four gold medals, two silvers and three bronze. This would be a marked improvement from the Tokyo Olympics where Team SA brought home just three medals.
Just who will win these medals is not specified by the Supercomputer, but there are a number of SA medal hopefuls like Akani Simbine (athletics), Tatjana Smith (swimming), Alan Hatherly (MTB), Jordy Smith (surfing), Prudence Sekgodiso (athletics), Christiaan Bezuidenhout (golf), Erik van Rooyen (golf), Ashleigh Buhai (golf) and Paula Reto (golf).
Wayde van Niekerk (athletics) also has the potential to surprise in the men’s 200m, but his contribution in the relays could be just as, if not more, significant.
There’s also room for a few surprises in the medal department from an SA perspective, but it’s difficult to look beyond some of the top names.
Last dance for Olympic tennis legend, @andy_murray.
— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 25, 2024
The @TeamGB star, who is the only man to win two Olympic gold in men's singles in the professional era, will end his career at @Paris2024, and is set to play in the singles and doubles at Stade Roland-Garros.#Olympics #Tennis pic.twitter.com/HxAEgFL8wo
The US, meanwhile, are unsurprisingly tipped to finish top of the medal table. The prediction is for the US to win 36 golds, 47 silvers and 35 bronze for a whopping total of 121 medals.
China will take second with 77 medals in total, with 32 gold, 23 silver and 22 bronze.
The top African nation will be Ethiopia with 17 medals in 17th place. They are predicted to win five golds, six silver and six bronze. Next on the African rankings are Egypt with a predicted tally of 11 medals. They are tipped to win six gold, three silver and two bronze.
How does the Paris 2024 Supercomputer work?
The model for the Paris 2024 Supercomputer uses over a century of Olympic history to predict the medal standings for the Paris 2024 event. This was done by analysing data from every Summer Olympics since 1896.
The model was trained to recognise patterns in how countries perform across different sports and events. The dataset includes every medal won and a variety of factors such as the country, sport, event, and gender of the event.
To make predictions relevant to Paris 2024, all countries that participated in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, excluding the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) which won't compete in 2024 as they will compete as the Individual Neutral Athletes delegation, or AIN.
They are not included on the medal table. The model used this data to learn and predict the likelihood of countries winning medals in each event.
To ensure a fair and realistic distribution of medals, the model allocated medals based on the predicted performances, adjusting to reflect historical trends.