Tag: olympics

medal projections, olympic sports

2012 medal projections: Archery sweep is South Korea’s aim

Posted on by Beau Dure

You’ve seen the political projections. Now let’s get to the ones that matter.

The Olympics happen every four years. (Think of the Winter Games as the midterms.) The competition is a little more honest than the typical U.S. election, and you don’t have to sit through insulting political ads.

We’re going to go sport-by-sport through the Olympics and project winners in London. We’ll base it on past results. Like FiveThirtyEight.com, we’ll be able to update our projections based on recent data. In our case, though, that’ll be actual competition such as World Cups and World Championships, not polls. Another advantage we’ll have over FiveThirtyEight.com — less math.

Let’s get right to it with an event NBC probably won’t feature in great detail:

ARCHERY

First rule upon checking results: Ignore compound bows. Nothing personal, but they’re not in the Olympics. Seems a shame for the USA, because Americans tend to do pretty well with the high-tech stuff. What we’re dealing with here is the more traditional “recurve” bow.

Women’s individual: South Korean dominance ran into home advantage in Beijing, as China’s Zhang Juanjuan won gold ahead of 2004 champion Park Sung-Hyun. That ended a streak of six straight golds for South Korea, but the 2010 World Cup results give little sign that South Korea is going away. Four of the top six women in the rankings were South Korean, led by Ki Bo Bae in first and World Cup final champion Yun Ok-Hee in fourth. India has an outside shot with two contenders — Deepika Kumari and Dola Banerjee. Poland’s Justyna Mospinek is the best spoiler.

2008: Zhang Juanjuan (China), Park Sung-Hyun (South Korea), Yun Ok-Hee (South Korea).

Projection: South Korea, South Korea, India.

Top Americans: Khatuna Lorig (18th in World Cup), Jennifer Nichols (17th in world ranking)

Women’s team: South Korea could probably enter two teams and win medals here if the IOC allowed it. They’ve won all six women’s team events in modern Olympic history. India gets the edge for silver based on World Cup results. Bronze is wide open — 2008 silver medalist China, bronze medalist France, rankings-round runner-up Great Britain and Italy are among the contenders. We’d go with the hosts if their world ranking were any higher than 16th. Instead, we’ll take second-ranked China.

2008: South Korea, China, France.

Projection: South Korea, India, China.

Men’s individual: The USA has a decent shot, with ageless Vic Wunderle (silver, 2000) still going and Brady Ellison taking the World Cup prize in 2010. South Korea is deep, with three straight team golds. Italy has a good track record in the team event and a couple of top performers in the World Cup. But outsiders are a threat in this event — Mexico’s Juan Rene Serrano won the Beijing ranking round before finishing fourth in the knockout phase, and Ukraine’s Viktor Ruban squeaked through to gold past South Korea’s Park Kyung-Mo.

2008: Viktor Ruban (Ukraine), Park Kyung-Mo (South Korea), Bair Badenov (Russia).

Projection: USA, South Korea, Italy.

 

Top Americans: Ellison, Wunderle.

Men’s team: In Beijing, China made a stunning run from 12th in the ranking round to take bronze. We’ll chalk that up to home advantage and focus on the South Korea-Italy tandem frequently on top here. Bronze is open, with Ukraine getting the nod on current World Cup rankings and Ruban’s medal experience (2004 team bronze in addition to 2008 individual gold).

2008: South Korea, Italy, China.

Projection: South Korea, Italy, Ukraine.

TOTAL PROJECTION (Gold-silver-bronze, 2008 gold-silver-bronze, total change):
– South Korea: 5 medals (3-2-0, 2-2-1, no change)
– India: 2 medals (0-1-1, 0-0-0, +2)
– Italy: 2 medals (0-1-1, 0-1-0, +1)
– USA: 1 medal (1-0-0, 0-0-0, +1)
– China: 1 medal (0-0-1, 1-1-1, -2)
– Ukraine: 1 medal (0-0-1, 1-0-0, no change)
– Russia: 0 medals (-1)
– France: 0 medals (-1)

BIG EVENTS:
– World championships: July 2-10, Torino

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basketball, cycling, olympic sports, soccer, sports culture

Tuesday tribalism (and news, not all about Duke)

Posted on by Beau Dure

We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A’, huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts! … We’re mutants. There’s something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us – we’re soldiers. But we’re American soldiers! We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years! We’re 10 and 1!

– John Winger (Bill Murray), Stripes

America may be the biggest and most powerful country the world has seen since Britain decided to quit naming most of the world after its monarchs, but we still love the underdog. No one’s making a movie about the big school with the great facilities that won the Indiana high school basketball championship as expected.

Once upon a time, Mike Krzyzewski and Duke were the underdogs challenging the long reign of Dean Smith and North Carolina in the ACC. No one had a clue of what was to come. True story: In a freshman dorm at Duke in the fall of 1987, someone said it was a shame we had all arrived after all the good basketball. And no one doubted it.

That’s changed a bit. The well-mannered runners-up with the unruly trend-setting crowd have become champions once, twice, three and now four times. By 2001, most people were sick of seeing Shane Battier on ESPN, no matter how likable and admirable the guy was. And seriously, what was up with that “Who’s your daddy Battier” chant?

Duke is also seen as a place of privilege, and as a standout Salon piece points out, Americans have mixed feelings about that. They’re not even consistent in how they apply that prejudice to basketball. Why would Duke be any more evil than Georgetown, another private school where the rent is a lot higher than it is in the crime-infested neighborhoods around Duke?

Continue reading →

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mma, olympic sports

Combat Games: New era of sub-Olympic competition?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Everybody wants to get a sport into the Olympics, but the line is long and slow-moving. The IOC hasn’t even put women’s ski jumping in the Olympics, preferring to leave a couple of ski jump ramps idle for a few days rather than admit that girls can jump, too. If you’re getting in the line now — attention, MMA fans — you’re not getting in the Games anytime soon. The Summer Games are too big, and they’ll eventually run out of permutations of ice and snow for the Winter Games. (But wouldn’t you love to see “snowboard combined,” with halfpipe determining the starting order for snowboardcross?)

And that’s why something like the Combat Games makes sense on many levels in addition to getting some extra use out of some Beijing venues. The Combat Games will have the Olympic sports of boxing, wrestling, judo and taekwondo, along with several other forms of martial arts. One drawback is that the program is focused a little too heavily on Asian sports — grappling, which actually could get into the Games as another discipline of wrestling, isn’t listed. But the concept is good.

They’re also looking at the Mind Games (chess and … something else) and the Beach Games. Not bad.

USA TODAY colleague Jeff Zillgitt and I used to talk about inventing the Pub Games. Darts is a rising sport, and pool could use a boost.

Maybe the line has to be drawn somewhere, but it’s hard to argue with the idea of giving existing Olympic sports another good stage alongside smaller sports that deserve a chance to be seen. Just work on the mascots.

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