USA Today predictions - Poland

To follow up on my international comments on the USA Today medal tracker, let's see how my home country stands. They predict 15 medals (including only 2 gold ones). Which is a rather low number, also compared to the previous optimistic estimate of 23.

First, let's see where they got it spot-on:

Boxing, Women's Lightweight - Karolina Graczyk 3rd
Silver in WC. Go get 'em!

Women's K2 500m - Mikolajczyk/Konieczna 3rd
2nd in Beijing. Konieczna already brought medals from three different Olympics, a fourth one would be awesome for her!

MTB women - Maja Wloszczowska 2nd
That's the bad case scenario, mind you!

Women's double sculls - 3rd

Magdalena Fularczyk & Julia Michalska won the WC before, thus definitely doable.

Men's RS:X - Piotr Myszka 2nd
2010 World Champion.

Women's RS:X - Zofia Klepacka-Noceti 3rd
Windsurfing World Champion.

100m Butterfly - Konrad Czerniak 2nd
2nd in the WC too, can anybody apart from Phelps beat him?

Men's Discus Throw - Piotr Malachowski 3rd
2nd in Beijing, 2nd in WC, European Champion, übercool guy too!

Men's Shot Put - Tomasz Majewski 3rd
Speaking of übercool guys: Malachowski's drinking buddy. Fear the beard!

Men's Volleyball - 3rd
Anything is possible. As in, pretty pretty please!!!

Weightlifting, Men's 105kg - Marcin Dolega 3rd
Triple WC, only 4th in Beijing though, having lost because of the infamous body weight difference. Safe bet!

Weightlifting, Men's 85kg - Adrian Zielinski 1st
That's why I got this ticket! It will be tricky though. He became the WC in 2010, finished third in 2011, and soon after his coach died tragically. How will it affect him?

Wrestling, Greco-Roman, 84kg - Damian Janikowski 2nd
2nd in WC. Hey, it's been a while, so why not?!

Now, where are they wrong, in my opinion?

Men's K1 200m
Mark my words: Piotr Siemionowski is not finishing this race second. He's going for gold!

 And yes, I know we've suffered from an awful jinx over the last decade or so: every time Poland was supposed to dominate water sports at the Games, and every time we failed. Until now, I say! But because the Universe must remain in harmony...

Women's K1 200m
Marta Walczykiewicz for gold?
3 times silver at the WC, but zero Olympic experience. Forgive my scepticism...

Men's Quadruple Sculls - 4th
2008 Olympic Champions, 2009 World Champions, 2010 European Champions. Now in dire straits after a freak injury to Adam Korol - the most important member of the team. Can "the Terminators" win one more medal before retiring collectively?

Women's tennis - Agnieszka Radwanska outside top 8
Say whut?!

Men's Handball - 7th
In other news, they failed to qualify...

800m Men - Adam Kszczot outside top 9
Hello?

Women's Pole Vault - Anna Rogowska 5th, Monika Pyrek 8th
Rogowska is the 2009 World Champion, Pyrek - with her personal best of 4,82m - can be dangerous too.

Men's Pole Vault - Pawel Wojciechowski 5th, Lukasz Michalski outside top 8
Wojciechowski is a 22-year-old reigning World Champion, for God's sake! Michalski - only 1 year older - finished 4th in Daegu.

USA Today predictions - global

USA Today has been running a great project called the London 2012 medal tracker, where based on the results of all kinds of events they're trying to predict the outcome of every single competition - award virtual medals - and then sum up the tally for each country. Obviously, with the huge amount of data available, they take quite a risk when trying to apply the same algorithm to all sports. And since they have recently come up with another monthly update, here are my two cents.

Not surprisingly, USA (42 gold medals, 89 overall) and China (35, 92) are head and shoulders above the others, with Russia (20,81) the best of the rest. The host country (15, 59) and Germany (18,56) are way behind, but I have a strong feeling the Brits could easily end up with 70-80 medals!

Digging deeper, let's take a look at a couple of horrible mistakes:

Cycling - road: Joaquim Rodríguez 4th, Mark Cavendish outside top 8. Now, let us look at the race profile:

 'nuff said!

Football: Brazil - 1st, Mexico - 2nd, United Arab Emirates, Korea, or Spain - 3rd
Watch out, Team Great Britain (featuring the likes of Gareth Bale and probable captain David Beckham) and defending champions Argentina. UAE are coming for you! Not.

Summing up, fantastic idea and all, but it could be improved so easily. In case of football, it just takes one intern to take a critical look at whatever the computer spits out. As far as cycling is concerned, even if you don't have the know-how, you could cross-reference your prediction with what the bookies think. Those guys are pros, y'know. (Here, not surprisingly, they all consider Cav the man to beat.)

Dear USA Today, thanks a lot, but please put more work into the 2016 edition!

Not what you're selling, but how

There are so many sports-related commercials that are remembered for any number of reasons. Embracing the greatest rivalries, getting to know the stars from a different perspective, humour, trickery, famous victories, famous defeats - you name it! Here's my short list of the most remarkable ones, so just sit back and enjoy!

The Tune

Gatorade started airing their “Be Like Mike” commercials in 1991. The catchy song provided the background theme for these spots. And you know what? 21 years later, sometimes I still catch myself humming it!

The Series

ESPN is to a sports fan what the Bible is to a Catholic. When they started the "This is SportsCenter" series back in 1994, you just knew every single one was going to be hilarious. Here's my personal favourite:

The Fraternity

Long before the curse on Henry, Federer, and Woods, long before everybody was all in, there was a very simple Adidas commercial that - as far as I know - pretty much started the trend. By now some of these athletes have had their careers ruined by injuries, others by doping. But back in 2004, every single one of them was at the very top of their respective sport. Ladies and gents, your alternative version of "We are the world":

The First Person Shooter

With computer games quickly taking over the world, Guy Ritchie had this fantastic idea that makes you feel like you're an upcoming football star yourself. Simply brilliant!

The bar has been set pretty high! Can't wait to see the London-themed commercials, which should start popping up in a couple of weeks now!