How many medals will Canada win at the Paris Olympics?
CBC
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Exactly one hundred days from now, on July 26, athletes from around the world will gather in the French capital for the official start of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. The plan still calls for a unique opening ceremony in which each country's delegation floats down the Seine on boats decorated with their national colours. But French President Emmanuel Macron said this week that security concerns could result in a more conventional parade.
For those wondering how Canada's athletes will fare in Paris, a good place to look is the fresh set of medal projections released today by Nielsen's Gracenote, a data-focused division of the company that measures TV ratings. Their model considers recent results in world championships, World Cups, Grand Prixs and the like to predict the medal winners for all 329 events in Paris.
With the disclaimer that things can change over the next three months and these are not my personal predictions, here are some Canadian takeaways from Gracenote's projections:
Canada should have one of its best Olympics ever.
The country is projected to win 22 medals — six gold, seven silver and nine bronze. That would match Canada's second-highest total ever for a non-boycotted Summer Games, alongside Atlanta 1996 and Rio 2016. But it's two short of the non-boycott-record 24 medals Canada won three years ago in Tokyo, which included seven golds.
Gracenote's model has Canada finishing 11th in total medals but 12th when you sort primarily by gold, which is the preferred way to do the standings.
The projected Canadian gold medallists are swimmer Summer McIntosh, who's in line to win two events; 800m runner Marco Arop; decathlete Pierce LePage; judoka Christa Deguchi and B-Boy Phil Wizard in the Olympic debut of breaking.
It's going to be the summer of Summer.
The teenage swimming phenom is poised for her breakthrough Olympic performance after debuting with a fourth-place finish as a 14-year-old at the 2021 Tokyo Games. Since then, she's won six solo and two relay medals at the world championships, including a Canadian-record four golds, and she's the current world-record holder in the women's 400m individual medley.
All signs point to McIntosh becoming a household name this summer, and the Gracenote model agrees. It has her winning five medals, including gold in both the 400m IM and 200m butterfly and a bronze in the 200IM (we're assuming here that McIntosh will also be part of Canada's projected bronze medals in the women's 4x100m medley and 4x100m freestyle relays).
The model says McIntosh will miss the podium in the stacked 400m freestyle, where she'll contend with current and former world champions Ariarne Titmus, Katie Ledecky and Erika Fairweather after placing fourth at last year's worlds. But McIntosh took silver in this event at the 2022 worlds and bronze in the 200 free last year, so five medals might be on the low side of possibilities for an extraordinary young athlete who seems to be getting faster every day.
The only projected Canadian swimming medal that McIntosh will not likely have a hand in is defending Olympic champion Maggie Mac Neil's bronze in the 100m butterfly. Mac Neil could also be involved in the two relay medals that Summer is projected to win.
Canada's only other projected multi-medallist in Paris is sprint canoeist Katie Vincent. The model has her taking silvers in the women's singles and doubles events.
