The Blues set for a historic feat at the Olympics?
In any case, this is what a study published Thursday says.
Less than five months before the start of the Paris Olympic Games, the virtual medal table Gracenote ranks France in third position in the ranking of nations.
In detail, the Blues would collect 27 gold medals at home, a determining criterion in the hierarchy, and would reach the podium a total of 52 times.
The tricolors would thus be ahead of Great Britain (16 titles) and Japan (15), but behind the United States and China, well in the lead with 37 gold medals estimated as it stands.
The Americans would finish first thanks to more money (37 against 26).
An unchanged ranking in this monthly index for France, which even put the Blues second behind the United States in its first projection in July, a year before the start of the 2024 Olympic Games. The Minister of Sports and the Olympic Games , Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, welcomed this perspective on the social network specialized in Gracenote,” she emphasized.
France is and remains in the top 3 of the possibly most successful nations at the Paris Olympics in these medal projections made by the specialized British entity Gracenote 👍 https://t.co/dFjCmcTudW
— Amélie Oudéa-Castéra (@AOC1978) February 29, 2024
The next Gracenote estimate is expected in a month, and will allow us to see where the chances lie for France, eighth with 33 medals including ten gold in Tokyo in 2021, even closer to the start of its Games.
This virtual table, created in 2012 for the London Olympics, is produced by Nielsen, an American company specializing in data analysis and processing.
Skills applied in the field of sport, where Gracenote compiles results to try to anticipate the Olympic podium in each event.
“Our model is based on the largest database in the world for Olympic sports,” explained Gracenote's head of analysis, Simon Gleave, to Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui en France in December.
The basic idea is simple: we take the ranking of a championship and a given event, and we award the athlete or team concerned a certain number of points depending on the value of the competition and the moment in which it was held. took place.
A medal three days ago will be better valued than a medal three years ago in the same competition.
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A bonus awarded to the organizing country
On arrival, the Blues must be able to rely on their expected headliners, such as Teddy Riner and Clarisse Agbégnénou in judo, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot in mountain biking or Léon Marchand in swimming, to achieve this historic score.
A leap forward, which would allow France to appear in the Top 5 desired by Emmanuel Macron, boosted by the Gracenote algorithm.
This inflates the predictions of the host country, traditionally more successful on its soil.
“Now, we must not forget that it is still sport, and that it is very difficult to predict.
There are surprises, and that’s good,” underlines Simon Gleave.
In the meantime, this allows France to dream of fabulous Olympics at home.