GSN exclusive: the USA tipped to win London Games

GSN alone is able to determine which country will win the London 2012 Olympic Games.

And the current verdict, based on predictive data which incorporates all major international championships and tournaments in all Olympic sports of the last two and a half years (2010 and 2011, with updates up to May 2012), is very clear: the USA will top the GSN Olympic ranking with a clear margin over Russia and China.

 

How do we do it? We don’t count medals but placements (in the first eight) in every single Olympic event. Then we weigh the results to account for each sport’s level of competitiveness and popularity (for a comprehensive account about the GSN method click here).

We track these placements for each of the major international tournaments in Olympic sports, and for each Olympic event: from the 2011 World Athletics Championships to the Rowing World Championships (2011 again) to the Football World Cup of 2010 etc. etc.

This gives us an event by event, sport by sport data base from which we derive the predictive ranking in each sport and for the Olympics overall.

 

Back to the May 2012 Olympic predictions. The USA’s victory is hardly a surprise, seeing their triumph in Beijing (see The USA won the Beijing Games) and their current form: we predict them to win Athletics, ahead of Russia and Kenya, and Swimming, ahead of Australia and China. They will also win Basketball and finish third in Volleyball (behind Brazil and Russia), second in Artistic Gymnastics (behind China) and Water Polo (behind Italy).

The first European nation outside Russia will be Germany, placed fourth overall with a significant third place in Field Athletics and ahead of three other “major” European nations: France, Great Britain and Spain. The British in particular will do well in Road Cycling and Water Sports: Swimming, Diving and Rowing and Sailing, which they will both win outright.

Brazil, in eighth place overall, will be the first South American country, thanks to good results in Swimming, Football and Volleyball.

China will of course be the top Asiatic country, followed by ninth-placed Japan. Australia, strong in Swimming and Track Cycling will finish a creditable tenth, while Kenya, twelfth overall, will be the first African country (third overall in Athletics!).

We also measure who’s the sportiest nation at the Olympics: in GSN points per capita, the winner will be Jamaica. It will take only 4679 citizens from the Caribbean island to score 1 GSN Olympic point, against eg 58495 from the US or 426063 from China.

 

But this is all in the future: follow GSN to see if we predicted right and find out which country will win the London 2012 Games.