All-Athletics.com | 2009.08.13
Prediction for the medal distribution by countries at the World Championships
Priscilla Lopes-Schliep
All-Athletics.com – The Most Comprehensive Athletics Database
Based on the latest All-Athletics World Rankings (11.08.2009) the medal distribution by countries at the World Championships is predicted as follows:
Country Medals
United States (USA) 25
Russia (RUS) 18
Kenya (KEN) 13
Jamaica (JAM) 12
Ethiopia (ETH) 9
Cuba (CUB) 6
Germany (GER) 5
Australia (AUS) 4
Great Britain & NI (GBR) 4
Poland (POL) 4
Bahamas (BAH) 3
Belarus (BLR) 3
Norway (NOR) 3
Czech Republic (CZE) 2
France (FRA) 2
Portugal (POR) 2
Sudan (SUD) 2
Antigua & Barbuda (ANT) 1
Bahrain (BRN) 1
Brazil (BRA) 1
Canada (CAN) 1
Croatia (CRO) 1
Eritrea (ERI) 1
Estonia (EST) 1
Finland (FIN) 1
Hungary (HUN) 1
Italy (ITA) 1
Japan (JPN) 1
Latvia (LAT) 1
Lithuania (LTU) 1
Morocco (MAR) 1
New Zealand (NZL) 1
Panama (PAN) 1
Romania (ROU) 1
Slovak Republic (SVK) 1
Slovenia (SLO) 1
Spain (ESP) 1
South Africa (RSA) 1
Uganda (UGA) 1
Ukraine (UKR) 1
Trinidad & Tobago (TRI) 1
COMMENT
All-Athletics.com, the Zurich base internet site is different than Track and Field News that predicts Canada will be without medals.
With only milliseconds separating the finalist in the 100m hurdles were Canada has Perdita and Priscilla ranked in the top five, any loss of concentration will be fatal. The hurdles is an event where “lady luck” decides the day. Let’s hope having 3 entries in the event with Angela Whyte competing for Canada as well improves our “luck” factor.
Gary Reed has been a great success in the past 2 years in that he had great strategic presence in navigating the treacherous preliminary rounds and semi finals. Compared to the Golden League and Grand Prix events where pacemakers are the rule, the world championships qualification is a very dangerous “shoot out”. In Beijing the majority of the favourites “bit the dust” in the qualification system. When the first lap tempo is left to chance and 8 runners are bunched in a pack with 100m to go, anything can happen based on how the herd picks a line to sprint to the finish line. Remember that in most instances only 2 qualify automatically and the rest selected by time. If the tempo was slow being 3rd can be fatal. Getting to the final is a bigger mountain than the final itself. Gary needs the “luck factor” as well.
Dylan Armstrong peaked precisely in Beijing where his 21.04 was in medal position until the last round. If he is able to produce his personal best in Berlin once again and his opponents fail to match their seasonal best, Dylan is in striking position. Does he need “puck luck”? Yes he does!
Our 4x100m relay team ran 38.63 yesterday in a trial meet. This predicts a good chance to make the top 8 but a medal would require some of the favourites to fail to execute their exchanges. It is almost a given that this will happen to some team. Le us hope that it is not Canada!
Doug Clement
