Ireland is now expected to treble its Olympic medal haul in Tokyo this summer compared to Rio four years ago, and with that match our best ever performance in the long history of the Games.
According to the latest Gracenote Virtual Medal Table, which collates and analyses results data from all the key competitions and events between Olympics, six medals are predicted for Irish competitors, including two gold, one silver, and three bronze. The same number as our record six medals won in London in 2012, only improving on the colour of one.
According to Gracenote, which has a solid track record forecasting recent Olympic medal winners, our two gold medals will be won by single sculls rower Sanita Puspure and by the Equestrian-Showjumping Team, with a silver medal going to lightweight double sculls rowers Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy.
The three Olympic bronze medals being predicted are for lightweight boxer Kellie Harrington, in the Equestrian-Eventing individual with Padraig McCarthy riding on Mr Chunky, and also in the Gymnastics-pommel horse for Rhys McClenaghan.
Those six medals would place Ireland joint 41st on the overall Tokyo Olympic medal table, just behind Norway, also a marked improvement on four years ago; the two medals won in Rio in 2016, thanks to sailor Annalise Murphy and rowers Paul and Gary O’Donovan, placed Ireland 62nd overall.
According to the Gracenote predictions, made available to The Irish Times, there will also be two fourth place finishers for Irish competitors in Tokyo, with Rory McIlroy predicted to just miss out on a medal in the golf, while the Irish double sculls rowers Ronan Byrne and Philip Doyle are also expected to finish fourth.
Byrne and Doyle did win silver at the World Championships in Austria last summer, as Sanita successfully retained her gold medal, but the double sculls medals in Tokyo are expected to go to China, Switzerland and Poland. The Ireland women’s hockey team are also expected to finish fifth, behind the Dutch, Australia, Germany and Argentina, and ahead of New Zealand and Britain.
Gracenote uses an extensive statistical model based on individual and team results since Rio, and is predicting the top-eight finishers across all the Olympic events, the latest Virtual Medal Table released six months before the Games open in Tokyo next July 24th; they will continue to update the Virtual Medal Table every month before that date.
In Rio, Gracenote picked the order of the top three countries correctly, and picked eight of the top 10 medal-winning countries. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, it correctly picked Norway to win a record number of medals and finish ahead of Germany. At the top of the table for Tokyo, United States is expected to win the most medals overall for the seventh successive Summer Games, winning 117 medals, including 36 gold.
Harrington, who won a world title in 2018, is expected to surrender gold to Brazil’s Beatriz Iasmin Ferreira, with Finland’s Mira Potkonen winning silver, while in the lightweight double sculls, the Italian boat of Pietro Ruta and Stefano Oppo is expected to win gold ahead of O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy.
Gracenote are also predicting that McIlroy will also miss out on an Olympic medal to three Americans, with Brooks Koepka projected to win gold, with silver for Xander Schauffele, and bronze for Dustin Johnson.
In the pommel horse, McClenaghan is expected to win Ireland’s first ever Olympic gymnastics medal, having last year won a first world championship medal, with Britain’s Max Whitlock expected to win gold, ahead of China’s Lee Chih Kai.
Rio was also Ireland’s lowest summer Olympic medal haul since Athens 2004, where the sole gold medal won there by showjumper Cian O’Connor had to be handed back after his horse Waterford Crystal tested positive for a banned substance.
The six medals won in London 2012, one more than the five won in Melbourne 1956, were made of one gold (boxer Katie Taylor), one silver (for boxer John Joe Nevin), and four bronze (for boxers Michael Conlan and Paddy Barnes, Cian O’Connor in individual showjumping, and 50km race walker Rob Heffernan).
In Tokyo, 87 countries are expected to win medals in all, but with Russia likely to be banned, the focus will be on how many of their athletes are allowed to compete under the Authorised Neutral Athletes or Olympic Athletes from Russia banner.
Britain’s medal total is expected to drop significantly from 2016. Their best hope is to break into the top-five rather than the top-three where they landed in the last two Olympics. Along with Japan, the Netherlands head a group of countries who can expect to improve significantly on their 2016 medal totals.
Gracenote, a Nielsen company, is the world’s leading entertainment technology company, providing data and content not just for sport but also music and video. How accurate their predictions are for Tokyo remains to be seen. Only six months to know.
Tokyo 2020 – predicted medal table
Country: Gold Silver Bronze Total
1. United States 47 36 34 117
2. China 43 21 23 87
3. Russia 25 19 22 66
4. Japan 30 24 11 65
5. Australia 17 16 11 44
6. Britain 13 12 17 42
7. Netherlands 16 9 16 41
8. France 6 16 15 37
9. Germany 9 12 14 35
10. Italy 7 8 17 32
40. Norway 3 1 2 6
=41. Ireland 2 1 3 6
= 41. Uzbekistan 2 1 3 6
