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Which nation will top the Olympic Games medal tally for Paris 2024? It is something that is often asked in the lead-up to the Olympics, and for some, there is quite a lot of thought that goes into it.

There are quite a few analysis models that provide a prediction of the final medal tally. Below are the top-10 positions from some of these prediction models that we have found. There are two sets of tables, one for predictions of the total gold medals won, the other for predicted total overall medals won.

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The method used to predict the winners varies, some are from scholars using economics and a range of factors to base their prediction, while others use recent competition results and possibly a bit of gut feeling. After the Olympics when the actual results are known, we will assess the accuracy of these prediction equations.

We have found several predictions online of the expected medal tally for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, though with many competitors from Russia and Belarus being banned from some international competitions since February 2022, it is difficult to assess the potential performances of athletes from these countries (e=in the end not many participated in the Olympics anyway).

Where there has been more than one prediction over time (such as for Gracenote), only the most recent prediction is shown. See more details about each of these prediction models here.

Predicted Gold Medal Tally

No surprise here, USA and China were predicted to be at the top of the gold medal table, by all models. The USA was predicted to win by all models, and the result only just went their way. Host country France was also predicted to rank higher than usual, as is often the case with the host country.

See the final medal table, the USA did it again, edging out China with a gold medal in the final event. It was only more other medals that made the difference. The USA have finished on top for seven out of the last eight Summer Olympics.

Table of predicted top 10 countries with TOTAL GOLD medals won

Predicted Total Medal Tally

No surprise here, USA and China were also predicted to battle for the top the table for the total medals won in most predictions.

Table of predicted top 10 countries with TOTAL MEDALS won

References

• Gracenote Sports Virtual Medal Table — This popular Olympic Games medal table prediction can be seen in many media outlets. This predictor uses an algorithm to rank athletes and teams in each Olympic event based on recent competition results (taking into account the result, how recent it is and the level of competition). This data is regularly updated leading up to the Games. See their 2024 predictions over time
• Le Comptoir du Sport (The Sports Counter) — French Twitter (X) account posting on predicted medals. https://x.com/ComptoirDuSport
• Totallympics — a simple ranking based on the current world champions for each event/sport. There will be changes as time progresses and more world championships are undertaken. See website.
• Nagpal, P., Gupta, K., Verma, Y., Kirar, J.S. (2023). Paris Olympic (2024) Medal Tally Prediction. In: Sharma, N., Goje, A., Chakrabarti, A., Bruckstein, A.M. (eds) Data Management, Analytics and Innovation. ICDMAI 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 662. Springer, Singapore. Based on regression equations using data from the last few Olympics.

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• University of Groningen  — predictions by Fabian ten Kate and Elmer Sterken of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, using an "econometric" approach. Their prediction is based on the results of recent World Championships for the relevant disciplines, supplemented by a factor of the home advantage. Their 2021 prediction was published in Dutch: Kate, F. ten and E. Sterken (2021) ESB (Economisch Statistische Berichten / Economic Statistical Reports).
• BEST Sports — predictions of sports results generated by experts using proprietary statistical models. These models are applied in their extensive database of sports results, with the aim of predicting future results. From the BESTSports website. Their predictions are updated every month, the final predictions just prior to the Games is listed. This data is regularly updated leading up to the Games.
• Frontiers — Li Feifei, Hopkins Will G., Lipinska Patrycja (2022) Population, economic and geographic predictors of nations' medal tallies at the Pyeongchang and Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. Front. Sports Act. Living 4:931817. They estimated and adjusted for the effects of total population, economy expressed as gross domestic product per capita, absolute latitude and Muslim population proportion on total medal counts. The medal count is rounded to the nearest whole number.
• Towards Data Science — from the article "The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Champions, Predicting the Medal Table of the Summer Games" by Adam C Dick, published 28 July 2019. The features he included for predicting medal counts were athletes, events, athletes per event, summer games, outlier nations, host nation.
• Financial Times — from the article "Tokyo Olympics Alternative medals table" Financial Times 2021. Data and analysis by John Burn-Murdoch, Martin Stabe and Kazuhiro Kida, using an ecconomic prediction model first developed by Julia Bredtmann, Carsten J. Crede, Sebastian Otten. The factors used included population size, GDP per capita and past results.
• Bleacher Report — from the article "Olympics Predictions 2021: Predicting Tokyo's Final Medal Count: by Joe Tansey on the Bleacher Report website.

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Related Pages

• About Predicted Medal Tables
• More Medal Tallies from each Olympic year
• See more about the Olympics Games in 2024