TEAMUSATRACKER: February 8, 2022
Day 5 Preview: 4 2018 GOLD MEDALISTS COMPETE TONIGHT , WHY NO GOLDS IN BEIJING IS NO BIG DEAL, AND DAY 6 IS GOING TO BE POPPING....
DAY 5. 35 Team USA Members compete in 11 events tonight including 4 2018 Gold Medalists (Chloe Kim, Shaun White, Mikaela Shiffrin, & Team Shuster)
-23 of the 35 athletes are making their Beijing Winter Olympic Games Debut
-10 of the 35 are making their Olympics Debut
- 5 of the 6 medal events today are 1 day only Medal Events including 5-time Olympian Lindsey Jacobellis who will go for 2nd Olympic medal to go along with her Silver from Torino 2006
-Out of the 11 events on schedule only 1 event had qualification or prelim heat before Day 5 and that event is ⛷Men's Big Air FREESTYLE SKIING: Final 🥇🥈🥉 which is new to the program in Beijing.
-Team USA has Medal Chances in 3 of 6 Medal Events but No GOLD MEDAL FAVORITES (But I have much more later on INDEPTH)
Big Air Freeski (Alex Hall, Mac Forehand, Colby Stevenson)
Women’s Slalom: (Mikaela Shiffrin, Paula Moltzan)
Women’s Snowboard Cross: (Faye Gulini, Lindsey Jacobellis , Stacy Gaskill) * multiple contenders in SBX Cross because anything well anything can happen.
Latest Live Schedule always in the @TeamUSATracker Google Doc (3 days out, could change due to weather and events being cancelled) and feel to tweet @TeamUSATracker during the event and share this POST TODAY IT IS GOOD.
*new feature the links on the athletes should take to some of the great NBC pieces on the athletes or athletes in their own words.
I have the above info in a thread on twitter too and just wanted to note
*New Feature: Note if follow along with @TeamUSATracker I will be doing a Medal Count update using @TeamUSATracker prediction of medals for the Day, pace of my medal prediction for the Olympics (26), Also updating if Team USA is leading Canada in overall medals something TeamUSA did not do in PyeongChang and has never lost twice to Canada in back to back Olympics.
Colors of a Traffic Light: Green means Ahead, Yellow means Even, Red means behind
And if you think Day 5 is Day 6 is POPPING.. with #TEAMUSA Looking for Medals in 7 Different Events and have 2 2022 Beijing Silver Medalist in Action again (Jessie Diggins & RCS) and have 2 GOLD MEDAL FAVORITES
🥇🥇🥇#INDEPTH: TEAM USA’s GOLD MEDAL COUNT🥇🥇🥇
The Headline: Team USA is having a Bad Olympics according to the current medal count. (Zero Golds, Behind Our Neighbors to the North Canada for back to back Olympics for the first time ever, The US hasn’t gone this long with zero golds at the Olympics since the 80s (1988 Calgary: 2 Golds) and (1984 Sarajevo: 4 Golds)
The Reality this is Wrong: Team USA is still on Pace to the get the 4th Highest Total of Medals in Winter Olympics History. Team USA on pace to perform the best they would ever do at a Winter Olympic Games in Asia. Team USA has a medal contender or medal contender or 4 in the case of Men’s Freeski Halfpipe Team (Seen here getting their kits in LA yesterday) in 43 of the 73 remaining medal events left at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
I read all the medal predictions (GraceNoteGold , AP , Sports Illustrated ) and did my created in the @TeamUSATracker Google Doc what I call a Win Index and no matter how you slice it the consensus coming into the Winter Olympic Games was 6 to 7 medals for Team USA. It was expected to be their lowest medal count since 1998 Nagano (6). Anything above 7 GOLD MEDAL would be OVERPEFORMING for TeamUSA. The low was Sports Illustrated who went with 5 Gold Medals and that would be the lowest since 1992 Albertville (5) The High was @TeamUSATracker who picks GOLD medal by one principle if Team USA is in the GOLD Medal Game..I’m picking TeamUSA so I went Gold in Hockey & Curling. (Did you Know: 75% of the Hockey & Curling Teams at the Olympics had a Top 3 finish at 2021 World Championships and Men’s Curling had a 3rd place finish in the Round Robin portion 2021 World Championships which at the Olympics would have guaranteed a Medal Game.)
SO WHEN DID THE PROJECTIONS SAY TEAM USA WOULD WIN MEDALS?
50% of the unanimous GOLD medal picks from projections assumed TeamUSA would win them on Day 6 (Nathan Chen, Chloe Kim). According to @TeamUSATracker Win Index Chloe Kim scores 100 because of her performance coming into the Olympics. and was @TeamUSATracker best bet a Gold Medal before the Olympics and Nathan Chen set a World Record Last Night
The other 50% of the the other unanimous GOLD were Day 10 (Women’s Monobob*), Day 13 (Mikeala Shiffrin: Combined).
So Day 6 was mathematically likely the first day Team USA would get a GOLD. WHY DO I KNOW THIS KEEP READING…
Note I am listing it as *Monobob picks as one different publications picked both Elana Meyers Taylor & Kaillie Humphries (#TwoAces) but all picks were made before their COVID revelation came out and they missed some training time on the track in China. These factors in my mind makes their Gold Medal percentage less probable in the Win Index but predictions were already made. Elana Meyers Taylor was back on the track as of yesterday)
WERE THERE ANY GOLD MEDALS PICKED BEFORE DAY 6?
THERE WERE 2
Only 13% of the GOLD medals predicted before Beijing were before Day 6: Men's Slopestyle (Day 2), Women's GS (Day 3) they were both calling for individual Gold Medalists to repeat from PyeongChang 2018.
Per Bill Mallon - Olympic Games Historian - he ran some numbers for me and Team USA has had 96 individual Olympic Gold Medalists (*some athletes count twice) in events. ….. Guess how many repeated in the same event ?
8 athletes in 9 events (Bonnie Blair (in 2 events), David Wise, Dick Button, Seth Wescott, Shaun White, Jamie Anderson, Bonnie Blair, Shani Davis, and Cathy Turner). Maybe Team USA got spoil because 25% of that club did it 2018 PyeongChang (David Wise and Jamie Anderson) and 55% of that club have done it either at 2010 Vancouver Games or 2018 PyeongChang Games.
75% of the medal predictions for Team USA banked on Chloe Kim and Red Gerard & Mikaela Shiffrin joining this club in Beijing.
So the Math was not really on Team USA’s side for any medal prediction before Day 6 because according to history Gerard and Shiffrin had 10% of winning Gold in their first event. Gerard had a better chance according to the Win Index because of some great recent performances and he was in 1st place after Round 1 and in Bronze Medal position until the end of 3rd round so he came pretty close to pulling it off.
HOW GOLD MEDALS WERE PREDICTED AFTER DAY 6?
THE REST
Gold Medals were predicted in 15 different events. 86% of the predicted events are slated to happen after Day 6 and 73% of the events are slated to happen after on Super Bowl Sunday or later so the 2nd half of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.
The Rest of the Predicted Gold medals are all after Day 9 and included 6 individual events: Women’s Speed Skating: 500M & Women’s 1000M, Freestyle Skiing Slopestyle & Halfpipe, in addition to the 2 unanimous GOLD in Women’s Monobob & Women’s Alpine Combined and 5 team events in which the Team USA had either never won a Gold Medal or never repeated a Gold Medal so 0% chance of winning based on history
Also fun note everyone one of the events that Team USA won in 2018 was picked to be a repeat winner except one Men’s Snowboard Halfpipe where Shaun White will will be competing tonight for the last time at the Olympics trying to qualify for the Halfpipe final📺 1130 PMET on NBC.
📸DAY 4 IN PICTURES AND TWEETS
JESSIE DIGGINS
RCS