The Paris Olympics are starting in a month, and experts think the United States will win the most medals overall. But there’s a close race with China for who will win the most gold medals.
Gracenote Sports, a Nielsen service which studies sports statistics, predicts the U.S. will win 123 medals total: 37 gold, 34 silver, and 52 bronze. They think China will win 87 medals total: 36 gold, 29 silver, and 22 bronze.
The U.S. and China finished first and second in both total medals and gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. If the U.S. wins the most medals in Paris, it will be the eighth Summer Olympics in a row they’ve done this.
The last time the U.S. didn’t win the most gold medals was in 2008 at the Beijing Olympics. China had put a lot of money into training athletes for those games.
Other countries expected to do well include Britain, France, Australia, and Japan. France, as the host country, is expected to win more medals than usual. Host countries often do better because they invest more in training and have home crowds cheering for them.
One thing that’s hard to predict is how Russian and Belarusian athletes will do. They haven’t been in many international competitions for the past two years because of the war in Ukraine. It’s not clear how many will compete or how well they’ll do.
The International Olympic Committee doesn’t make official rankings of which countries win the most medals.
Different people and media outlets count the rankings in different ways – some focus on total medals, while others only look at gold medals.
This prediction gives us an idea of what to expect at the Paris Olympics, but remember that anything can happen in sports!
The Associated Press contributed to this article.