PwC: New Olympic Medal analysis

By Rob Starr, Content Manager, Big4.com

According to a new analysis by economists at PwC, the US, China and Russia are again set to battle it out at the top of the Olympic Games medals table in London in August, although home advantage to Britain could play a part in how the Olympic medals are shared.

The PwC model suggests that the British team could win around 54 medals this time around, beating an already exceptionally good performance of 47 medals in Beijing, due to home advantage, which has proved significant in all other recent Olympics except Atlanta in 1996.

The analysis also says that home country advantage should on average boost medal share by around two percentage points, which might translate to around an extra 19 medals for Britain in 2012. However this needs to be tempered by the remarkable performance for the British team in Beijing that may have seen preparations for London 2012 already starting to bear fruit in areas such as cycling, rowing and sailing.

Now it is no longer the host country, China may find it more difficult to stay ahead of the US (as it did in Beijing on gold medals, although not total medals won). Russia is projected by the model to continue to perform strongly relative to the size of its economy in third place (68 medals), but it does continue to drift down the table relative to the heights of its performance in the old USSR era.