For all your extremely amateur coverage of the Olympics, mediocre attempts at being witty and original takes, overuse of GIFs and Memes & other random thoughts (and probably some handsome Olympians along the way).
Norway was overall as dominant as expected. 14 medals in Biathlon! It’s basically USA’s version of Swimming and Track from the Summer Games.
Russia was second, as everyone predicted, not many golds which I can’t say I’m too upset about. 11 medals from cross country skiing, but only four from Biathlo. It’s an interesting division between these two countries in terms of sport dominance.
Germany dominated the sledding sports with 7 bobsled, 6 luge and 3 skeleton. I got the number of overall medals correct in this prediction!
Canada ended up getting 1 more overall medal than the America BUT we had 8 golds and they only had 4 so….
USA came in 5th for total medals, very respectable. Freestyle Skiing was our dominant sport with 8 medals and snowboarding with 4. The X-Games style sports have been more of our jam lately. If there had been 1 more gold I would have predicted this one perfectly. 2 more medals than 2018 so hopefully we are trending back towards getting higher up on the medal count in future years!
RIGHT NOW (February 15 at 2:22pm) the country medal count order is exactly as I predicted! And I’m honestly a little surprised. We’ve had a good amount of disappointments but we still have the third most gold medals! There are still a lot of medals to be won so definitely a lot of opportunity for some shakeups. What might be the biggest story though is Norway, as expected, is at the top of the medal table but I feel like they were expecting to have more medals by this point. Not quite as dominant as everyone expected.
If we are seeing a spreading out of medals across more countries I’m all for it and I think a great thing for the future of the games. As long as they are all playing fairly (cough, cough Russia cough, cough).
It feels like we just wrapped the summer Olympics but here we are, only a few days away from the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing! Here’s my take on the top 5 countries predicted to be on top of the medal table by the end of the games.
The Dominant Frontrunner – NORWAY
Land of Fjords and Vikings, Magical Skies, Lakes & Trolls
Norway is predicted to go absolutely BUCKWILD and get more than 40 medals, mostly from ski sports. Which would best their 39 medals from 2018, the best ever by a single country in the winter Olympics. Everything I’ve read is saying there is no chance any other country gets close.
It’s very important for us not to go to Beijing as a team and start to count medals. That’s not the point. The point is to have good performances and have fun and be friends and if we achieve that, we have an experience that also means a lot of medals.
Tore Øvrebø, director of elite sport for Oslo-based Olympiatoppen
Royer’s Norway Prediction: 43 Medals, 21 Gold
It’s on my bucket list to visit and USA and Norway don’t have a lot of overlap in medal prospects so I will probably be rooting pretty hard for Norway, especially when they are racing for medals against the country coming up next….
First Loser – RUSSIAN OLYMPIC COMMITTEE
Land of bears on unicycles hiding in nesting dolls?
Russia is still banned from the Olympics for state-sponsored doping until the end of 2022 so will be competing as the “Russian Olympic Committee” under the Olympic flag once again. That, plus general world events, and we have ourselves a bonafide nemesis for these games. I’ll give the athletes who are competing in these games a fresh slate, I’m sure I’ll like some of them individually, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hope the overall prediction of ROC getting the second most medals is wrong.
Royer’s ROC Prediction: 29 Medals, 12 Gold
Their country is a giant frozen desolate depressing tundra so it kind of makes sense they are going to rack up some medals competing in a terrain they know best.
Bronze Medalist of Medals – GERMANY
Land of Beer & Bratwurst, Christmas Markets, Oktoberfest & Pretzels
Germany is always a safe bet for being near the top of the medal table. After a surprising 6th in 2014, they came back strong in 2018 to finish 2nd. I think they are going to have a successful Olympics in Beijing but unfortunately, it seems very unlikely they will be able to catch ROC in overall medals. I am hoping they get more golds at least.
Germany’s challenge is they excel in some sports that have limited opportunities for medals. Germany is good at luge and bobsled that combined have only 8 podiums. Cross country skiing, one of Norway’s best sports, has 12. But both countries are good at biathlon though, which has 11 opportunities for medals so if Germany can pull some upsets there, they have a chance of keeping close to ROC.
Royer’s Germany Prediction: 27 Medals, 14 Gold
And the more German Olympic medalists there are, the most likely a chance I will run into one and become friends with them and get pictures with their medal when I finally make my Germany trip happen.
Rock, Flag and Fourth – USA
Land of…..umm, just going to focus on the athletes and teams from the USA at the moment.
We are possibly in a smidge of a slump right now for winter Olympic medals. We peaked in 2010 with 37 but went down to 23 in 2018, the lowest amount in 20 years. Betting odds for this year aren’t much better and the storyline is battling it out with Canada for fourth place.
Snowboarding is our most dominant sport, we always do well in figure skating and women’s hockey, we’ve got some very strong female speed skaters and some great skiers. I’ll get into individual athletes and teams that I’m excited about later this week but overall I’m going to be optimistic that we defy some odds and end up firmly in fourth.
Royer’s USA Prediction: 25 Medals, 9 Gold
We have a very strong history of getting 9 gold medals at the Olympics and I think we’ll continue that but sneak in some more bronze and silvers than expected.
Pitter Patter, let’s get at her: CANADA
Land of Maple Syrup & Moose, Hockey, Poutine & Drake.
Canada, our friendly and polite neighbors to the north. They’ve been on a little bit of a tear the last 4 Olympics scoring 25+ medals. Besides the obvious sports of hockey and curling, they also have come to dominate freestyle skiing, the counterpart to snowboard.
Royer’s Canada Prediction: 24 Medals, 9 Golds
They aren’t predicted to have a stellar Olympics but I hope they do a little better than predicted, but just not quite as good as the USA.
Royer's Olympic Blog 