Sports Illustrated isn’t picking this to be much of an Olympic Games for Canada. If you equate Olympic success to winning medals, that is.
In its pre-Olympic edition, SI has been handing out medals in every sport – or at least predicting them – for every single event of the Olympics. SI staff writer Brian Cazeneuve has the impossible task of going sport by sport – some of which still should come with explanation – and assigning medals counts to athletes and countries.
The Canadian number from SI: 15. The number of gold medals: two. Cazeneuve is predicting victories for cyclists Catherine Prendel in mountain bike racing and Tara Whitten in a new overall combined cycling title.. The rest of the Canadian medals he is talking about come in other colours.
It should be noted that Cazeneuve did not predict medals for many of the veteran medal winners except trampolinist Karen Cockburn. He didn’t toss a bone to cyclist Clara Hughes, diver Alexandre Despatie, three-time medal winning diver Emilie Heymans or flag bearer, Simon Whitfield, a two-time medal winner in triathlon or former gold medal winner Daniel Nestor in doubles tennis.
It’s bold of SI and Cazeneuve to make so many predictions. It is bold but also well researched on his part. Let’s keep track of how he does with respect to Canadians. He tends to be closer to accurate than not. I know I’m curious to see how close he is on the Canadian medal winners, how many they will be.
Categories: Olympics
