Measuring Impact of Russian Absence from Rio

(ATR) The absence of the Russian athletics team at the Rio Olympics will make "very very little difference" to the medals table.

That’s what the data tells Simon Gleave, head of analysis for Gracenote Sports.

Gracenote, the world’s largest entertainment and sports data company,puts out a Virtual Medal Table on a monthly basis. Gleave tells Around the Rings that the current table, released in early June before the IAAF voted to maintain a November ban on the Russian athletics team, had Russia taking home 68 medals with seven of those coming in athletics.

The loss of those seven medals would mean Russia would end up with 61 total medals. Gleave says that no post-Soviet Union Russia team has ever finished with less than 63 total medals.

While the ban will mean the loss of seven medals for Russia, it won’t affect the overall Medals Table.

That’s because, according to Gleave, the seven medals "are spread around so much. Of those seven, no more than two go to a single country, Spain. The United States gains one medal and China doesn’t gain any at all from Russia."

Even with the loss of the seven medals, Russia is still predicted to finish third behind the U.S. and China.

So how accurate is the Virtual Medal Table?

Gleave says "We did this in London for the first time. We validated the model before we came into London on the Beijing data that we had. In London, there were 15 countries that won at least 18 medals and we had 12 of them within four of their actual total.

"We predicted Russia to win 82 and they won 81. We predicted Great Britain to win 67 and they won 65."

In a nutshell, here’s the methodology behind Gracenote’s Virtual Medal Table: It is based on results in world class events (Olympic Games, World Championships, World Cups or equivalent) from the London Olympics up until now.

The results are weighted for the importance of the competition (World Championship results get more credit in the algorithm than World Cup results) and the time since the competition took place (a result from last week gets more credit than a result from three years ago, for example).

If a sport has very few data points or is dominated by a single continent, continental championships are also included in the calculation.

For the sports of athletics and swimming, a "virtual" race is also included which is based on the fastest times recorded in the Olympic qualification period from May 2015 until now.

Gracenote’s algorithm then produces a rank for each event and gold, silver and bronze medals are allocated to the top three in that rank. All of that information then feeds into the Virtual Medal Table for Rio 2016.

Gracenote’s newest predictions will be released July 6.

Written by Gerard Farek

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