Winter Olympics season is here again and athletes are looking forward to the big event. This is one of the events that sports betting experts at MightyTips are looking forward to. Kate Richardson, one of the experts swiss betting sites and Norway betting sites at Mightytips predicts that there will be surprises and Norway will be a team to watch given it has been in the top medal table the longest.
Kate Richardson has been making predictions and carrying out comprehensive reviews of bookmakers offering various sports. If you want to see her predictions and sports analysis click here. In this article, we will explore the Winter Olympics and have a look at predictions that have been made as well as answer the events which will be shaping the tournaments. We will see whether the predictions can answer the question of how does the Olympic medal table work?
From 4th February 2022, the world will be in China for the Winter Olympics Games. This is a major international tournament that comes every four years featuring sporting events that are practiced on ice and snow. Held since 1924, the event is inspired by the ancient Olympic Games in Olympia Greece. Among the sports which athletes from several countries compete include:
- Alpine Skiing
- Biathlon
- Bobsleigh
- Cross Country skiing
- Ice Hockey
- Luge
- Ski Jumping
- Speed skating
- Snowboarding, among others.
So far 12 countries including Austria, Great Britain, Canada, Hungary, Norway, Poland, France, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States have participated in the tournament. Out of these, six counties have bagged medals in each Winter Olympic game. They include
- Austria
- Finland
- Norway
- the United States
- Sweden
- Canada
The United States is the only country to have won a gold medal in every tournament. Norway is the all-time Olympic medal table leader.
Predictions on Olympics 2022 medal table
Predictions have been made on how teams will perform at the Winter Olympics with Gracenote Sports, a US-based supplier of statistical analysis forecasting that Norway will head the medal table for the second straight time. The forecast also indicates that the Norwich team may even perform better than it did in Pyeongchang South Korea where it bagged thirty-nine medals.
The prediction has it that Norway will win 22 gold medals and bag 45 medals overall. A significant number of medals will be from biathlon and cross country skiing, events that the team has dominated for a considerable time. Coming second in the Table png will be Russia. This was a team that sports experts at MightyTips predict will do well just like they did in the Olympics 2021 medal table. Gracenote sports predicts that the Russian team will bag eleven gold and have an overall medal tally of thirty-two.
Just like in Tokyo, the team that will be participating in Beijing Winter Olympics will be known as the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC). The team will be competing without the national flag and the Russian national anthem will not be played. This is after the Russian team fell out with the Olympic Committee following allegations of a state-backed doping program during the Sochi games in 2014. According to the International Olympics guidelines the athletes are representing ROC and not the Russian State.
Germany has been placed to finish third in the tournament having bagged twelve gold and 25 medals overall. The other countries which have been predicted to perform well in the Beijing Winter Olympics include the United States which is forecasted to bag twelve gold medals, Canada with six, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, and France with two gold and 18 medals in total.
Boycott
It has become a trend in international sports for human rights to provoke some attention. The Winter Olympics in China has not been exceptional. Several events have been hit by diplomatic boycotts. In this event, several countries such as Britain, Australia, and the United States said they will have a diplomatic boycott citing widespread allegations and atrocities against the Uyghur community in China.
Many may be wondering the effect of this boycott on the winter games but this has a political connotation. Having politicians and diplomats attending the event have some scores on the organizing country. Non-attendance by government officials is seen as a relatively easy way to issue rebuke while avoiding the contentious step of preventing the athlete from participating in the games. This tactic is not new, it has happened before when some European nations avoided the Russian World cup following the poisoning of an opposition figure.
China has accused the boycotting nations of using games to manipulate politics. The country vowed to make some undisclosed countermeasures. France and Italy are not taking part in the boycott arguing that the tactic may not achieve a match as far as solving the problem is concerned. Sports commentators believe that diplomat boycotts are less harmful when compared with the full ban since athletes from the affected country still compete.
Some point out that the tactic may work effectively in bringing the issues at hand into the limelight. Some feel that the diplomat boycott denies the participating nations a chance to engage further leading to escalations of the issues at hand. The boycott may succeed in bringing the issues to the limelight and subsequently addressing the problem and at the same time, no athlete is barred from competing in the tournament. It means that athletes who are looking to gauge their performance using the games regardless of where they come from still have a chance to do that.
Norway has a chance to defend their all-time Olympic medal table performance given that they have done well including in the Olympics 2021 medal table. The event is expected to be big both in the sports and political fields. The predictions have been made and the betting experts cannot wait to see how the tournament turns out. It is just a matter of time and the question of how does the Olympic medal table work will be answered.
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