Bright prediction for Australia’s medal tally at Paris 2024 Olympic Games

“We know now that if the AOC and our sports can create the best possible high-performance environment to help athletes have their best days on the right day, the talent within the team will see Australia win medals in Paris.”

This was echoed by Kieren Perkins, chief executive of the Australian Sports Commission, which allocates government funding of sport.

“The ASC doesn’t comment specifically on medal predictions, but through the support and performance planning discussions over the past three years with sports heading to Paris, we’re confident that our athletes are well-placed to represent the country well and inspire Australians,” Perkins said.

Nonetheless, it is human nature to rank and compare, and Gracenote caters to it, exhaustively monitoring national and world championships and world cups. Its accuracy rate is just less than 90 per cent. For the Tokyo Games, for instance, it predicted for Australia 40 medals including 16 gold. The actual haul was 46 medals and 17 gold.

Pre-Tokyo, Gracenote correctly predicted the top 10 on the medals table, but not in perfect order. Before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, it named eight of the top 10, not in order.

Gracenote acknowledges forecasts for Paris have been made complicated by the ban on competitors from Russia and Belarus in almost all Olympic sports for the past two years.

But it notes that Russians and Belarusians, competing as individuals, will have negligible impact on Paris 2024. Russia, for instance, sent 335 competitors to Tokyo, bringing back 71 medals including 20 gold. In Paris, there will be no more than a couple of dozen.

Gracenote has hardly gone out on a limb in predicting big things for the US and China in Paris. The US has been put down for 123 medals, its best since Los Angeles 1984, nearly half of them in athletics and swimming. China is earmarked for 70 medals, including 35 gold, merely four fewer than the Americans.

Great Britain is expected to sustain the excellence it has displayed since it won the rights to host the London 2012 Games, winning more than 60 medals for the fourth time in a row. More than half of France’s mooted 55 medals will be gold, which should make the streets of Paris the place to be.

Japan, naturally, is predicted to win half as many gold medals as it did in Tokyo. But Italy and the Netherlands will maintain and even improve on their bold performances in Tokyo, comfortably sitting in the top 10 again. Germany, though, will continue its long, slow decline since reunification.

The AOC notes the bullish outlook for Australia, but otherwise is keeping a sensible distance. “Our focus is all about getting the environment right so that each athlete has the best opportunity to produce their very best at the Games,” said Chesterman.

“For some, that will be a personal best, for some that will be an Olympic final and for some, it will be an Olympic gold medal.”