Category — Winter Games

Them people at the Associated Press have much bigger balls than economist Daniel Johnson and his team. Why? Because they not only predicted the number of medals that a national team will harvest in Vancouver, they are also predicting the individual medalists (see below). If that is not chutzpah, we don’t know what is.

But just because we are saying these AP guys and gals have big balls does not mean that we will not be mocking them if any of their predictions do not come true. After all, these kinds of very precise predictions are invitations for mockery, eh?

Anyhoo, here’s our prediction for the Vancouver Games: We predict that there will be more American crybabies. Wanna bet?

Associated Press Individual Winner Predictions

ALPINE SKIING

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Canada’s hometown advantage will help it win the most medals in the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Winter Games. Well, that’s not surprising really, all Olympic host nations benefit from a home-field advantage.

Anyhoo, here’s a prediction by economist Daniel Johnson and his team on how the top national Olympic teams will fare in the medal race.

The Vancouver Winter Games is still a year away but let’s start featuring some athletes who are expected to do well in their respective fields.

Olympic fans, meet Canadian hockey player Cherie Piper. Cherie joined the National Team in 2001 and has helped the team win a World Championship Gold medal in 2004 and Olympic gold medals in 2002 and 2006.

Awesome, eh?

They’re not really fighting but they’re also kind of fighting. Contradictory, eh? If you remember our earlier post, we reported that Elvis Stojko, a two-time figure skating Olympic gold medalist, urged Canadian athletes to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games in the name of human rights.

Adam Van Koeverden, world and Olympic kayak champion, is having none of it: “I respect Stojko and his opinion but I think he would have moderated his comments if he was headed to the Olympics to win a gold medal.” [cbcsports.ca]

Clearly, Adam is against an Olympic boycott as he wrote the following in his blog:

To suggest that participation in the Beijing Olympics is somehow ignorant of human rights violations or the situation in Tibet is ridiculous to me. I’m not pledging my support or choosing sides by going to China to compete, if anything I think a high profile event of this magnitude will draw attention to, and potentially lead to solutions to the problems that exist. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama doesn’t support an Olympic Boycott, citing that the people of China aren’t to blame for the situation; I don’t think athletes from around the world should be either.

Unless Elvis comes up with a strong comeback — like saying something like “Adam dude, figure skating is much more popular than kayaking, so shut up will ya” — we are putting the score at Adam: 1 vs. Elvis: 0.

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Did you know that some events in the Winter Olympics have a very small number of “practitioners”? This is according to a group of women ski jumpers which is planning to sue the Vancouver Organizing Committee to have women’s ski jumping included in the Vancouver Olympics. From AP:

Supporters of women’s ski jumpers argue there are 135 women ski jumpers in 16 countries. This compares to other sports already in the Games like snowboard cross, which has 34 women from 10 countries, skier cross, which has 30 women from 11 nations, and bobsled, which has 26 women from 13 nations.

Only 26 women bobsledders from 13 nations? If only three of them join the Olympics, will the organizers scrap the event or will all three get a medal?