USA Today projects Friis to win 800 free at London 2012

USA Today has this interesting “Olympic Medal Tracker” on their site, where they use an algorithm to project the winners in each medal event for the 2012 London Olympics, based on an athlete’s results in events such as world championships and World Cup. With emphasis that it doesn’t predict how the medals will play out in 2012, but only which athletes are strong now. Anyway, the projection is that USA will top the overall medal count with 88 medals ahead of China’s 84, and that swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte are projected to be among the USA’s big winners, if current form holds.

For us Nordic people the most interesting is that their tracker projects Denmark’s Lotte Friis to win the 800 freestyle and Sweden’s Sarah Sjöström the 100 butterfly, while neither Denmark’s Mads Glæsner nor Faroe Island’s Pál Joensen figure in the 1500 or 400 finals. Sweden’s Therese Alshammar is projected to win silver in the 50 freestyle, while Denmark’s Rikke Møller Pedersen will be only 6th in the 100 breaststroke, Norway’s Alexander Dale Oen similarly 6th in the 100 breaststroke and 8th in the 200, and Sweden’s Stefan Nystrand 7th in the 50 freestyle.

No Nordic country will have a relay in the men’s events, while Sweden is projected to be 6th and 7th in the 4×100 free and 4×100 medley relays.

In the 1500 free, Canada’s Ryan Cochrane is predicted to topple Oussama Mellouli. Both Japan’s Kosuke Kitajima and USA’s Michael Phelps are projected to be the first male swimmers to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the same event, Kitajima in the 100 breaststroke and Phelps in the 100 and 200 butterfly.

But I don’t know, in the 400 freestyle, USA’s Larsen Jensen is predicted to be 8th in the 400 freestyle, even though he is retired and just recently graduated as a Navy Seal.

Via Gold Medal Mel