On July 26, 2023, one year before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, the consulting firm Nielsen, through its Gracenote business unit, published the first virtual medal table (VMT) forecast for the 2024 Games. Taking into account the available results data of the main global and continental competitions since Tokyo 2020 (July 2021), this forecast will be updated monthly until the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games. The last projection was published at the end of November and some indices are interesting to analyze.
Since Russian and Belarusian athletes have been excluded from international tournaments in almost all Olympic sports since February 2022, Gracenote clarified that it was not possible to accurately assess the potential performance of these two countries or of a possible shortcut that would allow them to participate in Paris 2024 as neutrals. For this reason, Russian and Belarusian athletes have been eliminated -for the time being- from this virtual medal table.
According to the November release, the United States will be the team that will win the most medals in Paris 2024. If the North American team meets these expectations, it would reach the top of the final medal table of the Summer Games for the fourth time in a row. Gracenote’s current projection of 126 medals would mean 13 more than the total achieved by Team USA in 2021. Athletics and swimming remain the key to success, as 48% of medals are expected to be won in these two disciplines.
According to this report, China will finish second, but closer to the performance of the delegation at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games than to what was extraordinary in Tokyo: the 78 medals expected would be 11 fewer than those won in the Japanese capital two and a half years ago. Jumping, shooting, weightlifting, table tennis and artistic gymnastics are the sports that will bring the most medals to China.
Gracenote’s virtual medal table for Paris 2024 suggests that Britain can maintain its winning performance of 60 or more medals for the fourth consecutive Olympic Games. British success in the last three events has been based on winning medals in at least 20 sports, and the current VMT forecast suggests that this will continue. Before the 2012 Olympic Games, Great Britain had only won medals in at least 20 sports in London 1908, a very different Olympic era. The botanical delegation is expected to slightly improve its results in Tokyo 2020, with an increase of two medals, for a total of 66. However, gold medals could decrease from 22 to 17.
The host country, France, should increase its overall medal table considerably compared to the 33 total medals won in Tokyo 2020. The VMT places the French delegation in third place in gold medals, behind the United States and China. The expectation is so great that its expected total of 27 Olympic titles would be almost equal to the total number of medals from France in the last Olympic Games. The host delegation is expected to celebrate its best performance since Paris 1900.
Italy had the best Olympic Games in its history in Tokyo, but Gracenote’s virtual medal table predicts an even better performance in Paris 2024. Encouraged by a possible best performance in its history in the pool and in gymnastics, the data indicate that Italy will win a record number of 49 medals in 19 different sports, four more than in Tokyo. The Azzurra delegation could also be close to breaking its record of 14 gold medals, set 40 years ago at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Australia, especially supported by swimming, would remain in the top 10 well above the rest of the oceans, while Brazil will be the best country in Latin America according to this projection.