Team Sports at the 2020 Olympics

For today’s predictions, I’ll be looking at those sports which are (loosely speaking) the team sports at this summer’s Olympics. As ever, per my previous post, take these predictions with at least a grain of salt – I’m not an expert at the best of times but the events of the last 18 months have made making accurate sporting predictions even more of a guesswork than usual!

Baseball

Baseball is back in the Olympics for the first time in a while, as one of the optional sports chosen by the Tokyo Olympics. The timing of the Games, however, means that this will not be an event headlined by many of the current greats of the sport, most of whom are currently mid-season in MLB. Most of the six teams are therefore a mixture of relatively inexperienced (at the top level) newcomers or some recently retired former greats, such as Jose Bautista and Adrian Gonzalez. This therefore makes this a tough prediction to make as, frankly, I don’t know much about any of the teams’ likely form!

  • Gold – Japan
  • Silver – Mexico
  • Bronze – USA

Basketball

There are two basketball events at this year’s Olympics – the normal 5 on 5 event that people will recognise, and a new 3-on-3 event that is making its debut at these Games.

In terms of the ‘normal’ basketball, the Women’s event is arguably one of – if not THE – easiest predictions to make for the entire Games. The US Women’s team is utterly dominant. They have won the last three World Cups and the last SIX Olympic Games, usually by a considerable margin. It would be monumental shock for them not to continue that streak.

If we are looking purely at Olympic gold medals, the Men’s team is almost as successful as the Women’s. However, recent form has shown a few cracks in their armour. At the 2019 World Cup, the US Men finished only 7th, losing at the quarter final stage to France. This was, admittedly, an understrength team but still a roster of NBA players. In preparation for the Games this summer, the US has lost exhibition matches to both Nigeria and Australia, even with a full-strength team available. Whilst they still should be considered favourites, it would not be anywhere near as big a shock were they not to win gold. Spain, France, Australia and Argentina are amongst the countries hoping to cause that shock.

The new 3×3 tournament is played in what can be considered ‘backyard’ basketball conditions – a half court with both teams shooting at the same hoop, with 1 point for a basket scored within the arc, and 2 from outside (as opposed to the 2 points from inside and 3 from outside in the ‘normal’ game). The game is first to 21, or whoever is leading after 10 minutes if that score is not reached. The fast-paced nature of the game, like rugby sevens, closes the gap between the traditional top nations and others.

Men

  • Gold – USA
  • Silver – Spain
  • Bronze – Australia

Women

  • Gold – USA
  • Silver – Australia
  • Bronze – Spain

Men 3×3

  • Gold – Serbia
  • Silver – Poland
  • Bronze – Japan

Women 3×3

  • Gold – USA
  • Silver – China
  • Bronze – France

Football

Football at the Olympics is an oddity, as it includes an age restriction (possibly the only one that I can think of). Whilst the women’s competition is all ages, the men’s competition is limited to U23, with up to three over age players allowed.

Because of the time of the rearranged Games, and other rearranged competitions (both the Copa America and the European Championships finished less than a week ago), the squads are perhaps somewhat weaker than normal. Spain’s squad seems a standout, though they are likely to face a tough challenge in the quarter finals from one of Germany or Brazil. I fancy the final to be Spain vs Brazil, with Japan taking advantage of the home conditions to pick up the bronze.

The Women’s Event seems, on the face of things, easier to predict. Given the draw, it’s hard to look past a repeat of the 2019 World Cup Final, between the USA and the Netherlands. Bronze is more open, with several sides, including Japan, Great Britain, Sweden, Canada and Australia. Again, with the set-up of the draw and home conditions, I think Japan could come away with the medal.

Men

  • Gold – Spain
  • Silver – Brazil
  • Bronze – Japan

Women

  • Gold – USA
  • Silver – Netherlands
  • Bronze – Japan

Handball

Denmark are the reigning Men’s champions, and winner of the last two world championships, so rightly should be considered favourites going into the Games. The Women’s competition seems more open, with ROC (which is the Russian team but there aren’t allowed to compete under that name), Netherlands, France, Spain and Norway all being realistic contenders for the top of the podium.

Men

  • Gold – Denmark
  • Silver – France
  • Bronze – Sweden

Women

  • Gold – Spain
  • Silver – Netherlands
  • Bronze – ROC

Hockey

For the Americans amongst you, sadly this sport isn’t the ice version. Perhaps because of that, the US is unrepresented this summer in the sport – indeed, on the Men’s side, the US has not reached the Olympics in hockey since hosting in the games in 1996, although the Women’s team has a much better record.

In recent years, Australia and the Netherlands have been countries that have dominated both the Men’s and Women’s events and it would be no surprise if they were to be amongst the medallists again this summer.

Men

  • Gold – Australia
  • Silver – Belgium
  • Bronze – Netherlands

Women

  • Gold – Netherlands
  • Silver – Australia
  • Bronze – Great Britain

Rugby 7s

Rugby 7s made its Olympic debut in Rio, where Fiji (Men) and Australia (Women) took gold. Many of the teams that contested those games return this time out, including New Zealand, who missed out entirely on the medals in the Men’s event last time out, the USA – a growing power in the sport – and, on the Men’s side at least, look out for the host nation. They reached the Semi Finals in 2016 and may look to repeat that performance here.

Men

  • Gold – New Zealand
  • Silver – Fiji
  • Bronze – South Africa

Women

  • Gold – New Zealand
  • Silver – Australia
  • Bronze – USA

Softball

Softball returns to the Games after its absence at the last 2 Olympics. I’ll be honest, I know almost nothing about the sport! However, it is a sport that has been dominated by the US and Japan previously, which explains in part its return. The last two World Cups have had the US, Japan and Canada on the podium, and that seems like a logical prediction for this summer.

  • Gold – USA
  • Silver – Japan
  • Bronze – Canada

Volleyball

In both Indoor and Beach Volleyball, it is a reasonable bet to back either Brazil or the USA. Since the beach version of the sport was introduced in the Atlanta Games of 1996 there have been 72 medals awarded between the two types. Exactly half of those medals have gone to a pairing or team from one of those two countries.

One word of caution – this is one of the events where the knock stage draw is not determined by pure seeding in advance, however but rather after the pool play, which makes it tougher to predict than some events given that “luck of the draw” absolutely comes into play here.

Men Indoor

  • Gold – USA
  • Silver – Poland
  • Bronze – Brazil

Women Indoor

  • Gold – China
  • Silver – Serbia
  • Bronze – Brazil

Men Beach

  • Gold – Mol/Sorum (Norway)                     
  • Silver – Evandro/Bruno (Brazil)
  • Bronze – Alison/Alvaro (Brazil)

Women Beach

  • Gold – Klineman/Ross (USA)                     
  • Silver – Clancy/del Solar (Australia)
  • Bronze – Pavan/H-Parades (Canada)

Waterpolo

Men’s Waterpolo has long been dominated by teams from Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe. I don’t expect that to change this year. The same is mostly true on the Women’s side of things, with one important exception. The US Women’s team is a powerhouse on the world stage,  and should be considered the overwhelming favourite for gold again.

Men

  • Gold – Hungary
  • Silver – Spain
  • Bronze – Croatia

Women

  • Gold – USA
  • Silver – Spain
  • Bronze – Hungary

If you want to prove yourselves smarter than me (not the most difficult of challenges, I’ll admit), add your predictions in the comment below!

Predictably Olympic

As I mentioned in my opening post on the blog (congratulations for coming back for a second read by the way! Commendable dedication!), one of the things I’ll be doing on the blog is predicting multiple sporting events. And sporting events don’t come any bigger than the Summer Olympics.

Whether you are a fan of football or rowing, weightlifting or speed climbing, the Games of the XXXII Olympiad (to give them their official name) has something for every sports lover.

Over the next few days, I’ll be trying to post predictions for all the events (gulp). But, before I do, I thought I would share a few factors that you should take into consideration before either listening to those predictions or – more likely – start mocking me for their inaccuracies.

The COVID Pandemic

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first, if for no other reason than this is a small room, definitely not suited to the storage of pachyderms.

The ongoing pandemic has already had a huge effect on the Games themselves, forcing their postponement by a year. They’ve also impacted athletes, who have had to deal with not only that delay but also limited competition chances and training opportunities, not to mention the obvious health concerns. Even this week, some athletes have tested positive and been forced to drop out of the Games. Undoubtedly more will be forced to do so before the medals are awarded. All of this makes these Games arguably the most unpredictable in recent memory.

General Fitness

I’m choosing to separate this from the COVID issue as it is something more general – sometimes even the best athlete gets injured. You can be the overwhelming favourite in an event but, if you pull a hamstring halfway through your first heat, that might be it. For that reason, predictions are obviously made based on the expectations that all athletes selected will be fit. If I could accurately predict injuries, I would probably be earning a lot more money than I do being employed by a government somewhere as a soothsayer.

The Luck of the Draw

This is an issue that occurs most frequently in the team sports. To prevent teams from seeking favourable draws in the knock-out stages of a tournament, as infamously happened in badminton at the London Games in 2012, some sports have opted to not have a defined draw published in advance of the tournament but to make the draw following the group stages with limited seeding. This change can make it slightly harder to predict how a competition might unfold in advance.

Unhelpful Athletes

This hopefully won’t be a major issue but will crop up a few times, particularly in athletics and swimming. Some of the superstars of these events, such as Sifan Hassan on the track or Caeleb Dressel in the pool are entered into multiple events. It is possible that Dressel may take part in all those events but, if he is worried about his form, he could potentially drop one or two of his less favoured events at the last moment.

This is especially true of Hassan. She is currently entered into 3 events – the 1500m, 5000m and 10000m. It’s very likely that she will do two of them and will be a strong medal favourite in whichever two she does. However, because of the vagaries of the schedule, it would be a huge shock to see her even attempt all three. However, Hassan has not yet indicated which event she will drop, which is unhelpful for those making predictions! My personal belief is that she’ll drop the 1500m, hence why I’m not including her in my predictions for that event (sneak preview there) but were she to surprise me, she would absolutely become a medal contender.

So there, you go. I’m getting my excuses in early. If you have read all that and still rely on my predictions, I admire your stubbornness/persistence (delete as applicable).

EDIT – in the hour or two since I’ve posted this, we’ve already seen another COVID related withdrawal, with Coco Gauff, the current world number 25, dropping out of the Games. I’ve no doubt that we’ll see more before the Games officially open on Friday, let alone during the competition itself. I’ll be doing my best to update predictions where possible, but obviously I can’t guarantee that I’ll get around to all of them!

Welcome to Ian’s World Of Sports!

Congratulations on finding the blog and thank you for choosing to waste your time reading my nonsense! I’m Ian and this is my World of Sports. Catchy name, I know!

What is this blog about?

Sports. All of them. Well, probably not ALL of them. I’ll be honest, as insanely brilliant as it can be to watch, this is probably not going to be the place to learn more about Kabaddi. At least for now. Maybe later.

More than anything, this is just a place for me to voice my thoughts. I do so on twitter but, frankly, the character limit gets a bit annoying at times.

What sports will you be blogging about?

Anything and everything sporting that takes my fancy. That might be a current event happening, an interesting sportsperson, or a past event.

I will also be doing predictions for a bunch of sporting events. I started doing predictions for the 2012 Summer Olympics, after seeing someone else do it first and deciding that I could do a better job, as well as to give me someone to root for in each event. Especially the events that Britain weren’t good at.

Since then, I’ve expanded those predictions from just the Summer Olympics to other multi-sports events, such as the 2018 Commonwealth Games and European Championships, as well as single sports events such as the World Aquatics Championships or the IAAF World Championships. I’ll be continuing that personal tradition and publicizing it for the world to see, and laugh at.

What qualifies you to talk about sport?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Whilst I have a deep-rooted love of sport, my sporting prowess is…not great. High school rugby and athletics is about as far as it went, along with the occasional game of squash as an adult and a solitary half marathon when I was too young to know better. So, as a sportsperson, I’m nothing to write home about.

As a sports viewer, however, I like to think I excel. I’ve been fortunate enough to have had the chance to see a bunch of my favourite sports and teams live, ranging from attending two Rugby World Cups, through various football, cricket, ice hockey, American football and other events, right down to watching my dad cycle in his local club time trials when I was younger. Add in sports that the magic of television and the internet have brought to my attention as I’ve got older, and I’d say that I’m positively Olympian as a consumer of sports.

Why did you decide to do this?

A fair question. Mostly it is because I’m 95% sure my wife is sick of hearing me talk about sports she has no interest in. Whilst she isn’t anti-sport in any way or form (she is a recovering ice hockey obsessive who dedicated much of her teen years to the Detroit Red Wings), she doesn’t have quite the same love of random sports I have.

She also claims that I’m a relatively decent writer and says therefore that it makes sense to combine these two loves. However, as I said, I think she just wants other people to be forced to listen to me talking about the minutiae of the rules to the Madison discipline in track cycling instead of her. You lucky things.