I didn’t realize that accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is also into Olympic “crystal ball gazing” but, apparently, it is. The firm foresees China emerging as the overall Olympic champion with one more medal than the United States: China (88) vs. U.S. (87)

It also predicted that Russia will drop to third place with 79 medals followed by Germany (43), Australia (41), Japan (34), France (30), Italy (29), Britain (28) and South Korea (27). More at Yahoo.

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China will emerge as the new overall Olympic champion when the final medal tally is counted in Beijing. Says who? Researchers from Sheffield Hallam University who predict that the host nation will win 46 gold medals during the Beijing Olympics.

From BBC: “China has set its stall out to become the number one nation in sport and to top the table in its host event,” Professor Simon Shibli told BBC Sport.

“We are forecasting China will win 46 gold medals, which probably exceeds most other people’s forecasts.”

Professor Shibli analysed past Olympic performances, China’s record in turning bronze and silver medals into gold ones, and recent success on the international stage to reach his conclusions.

“Its improvement from the Seoul Olympics in 1988 to second place and 32 gold medals in Athens is unprecedented,” said Professor Shibli.

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The Olympian Blog has found its political idol. You can now rightfully accuse us of idolatry. Ladies and gentleman, met Nigerian President Umar Musa Yar’Adua, The Olympian Blog’s “Idol Extraordinaire”.

Why is he our idol, you ask? Because he directed/charged/ordered Nigeria’s Olympic athletes to win not less that eight gold medals during the Beijing Olympic Games.

So unlike timid national leaders who say, “We wish our country will have x medals” or “We are hoping for x medals” or the very lame “The important thing in the Olympics is to take part, its not the triumph but the struggle”, our idol raised his voice and said to his athletes: “Thou shalt win eight or more gold medals”.

Between wishy washy timid leaders and one who is like Moses, we really have no choice. We will gladly take the latter. Expectedly, the doubters are spreading their virus of doubt. According to our reliable source, a doubter supposedly said this:

“Where are the eight gold medals going to come from? Are they going to be stolen from other countries or is the minister thinking of counting the paralympic gold medals to be won by our disabled athletes?”

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The infighting among Mexico’s sports officials which we blogged about earlier has not prevented Mexican athletes, 66 of them to date, from qualifying for the Olympics.

Mexico is aiming to send 85 athletes to Beijing which would be lower than the 114 athletes who competed during the Athens Olympiad where Mexico bagged four gold medals, two silvers, and two bronzes.

The reduced number of athletes is mainly due to Mexico’s failure to qualify in baseball as well as in men’s and women’s football/soccer.

If you’re wondering about Mexico’s prospects in the Olympics? Here’s what the head of its delegation thinks:

“We cannot forecast how many medals we are going to win, it is not prudent to do it because we are trying to solve this Olympic cycle. We calculate seven or nine finals, and like I have said, anything can happen in a final.”

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Like the Olympic predictions we’ve been featuring here, we will soon find out in August whether Boris Gryzlov is correct or not.

Xinhua: Russian athletes may win 30 to 40 gold medals at the Beijing Olympic Games, Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the State Duma, lower house of the parliament, said on Wednesday.

Olympic games has become the “indicator by which one can judge the quality of a country’s sport development, and the effectiveness of the money used in this field,” Gryzov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

He said that Russia had spent more than 12 billion roubles “on the training of our athletes for participation in the Beijing games,” and have chances to rank among the world’s three best sport states.

Russian lawmakers are closely watching the training of domestic athletes, as well as the legislative support of sport development.

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