If you want to know how many gold medals the United States or competitors China and Russia will win at the 2008 Summer Olympics, don’t ask the sports nuts. Talk to economist Daniel Johnson.
There’s about a 95 percent chance he’ll be right.
The Colorado College professor’s mathematical formula — based on factors such as wealth and politics, and not on athletic ability — has come eerily close to nailing down the final medal count for the last four Olympics.
“Why are the top 10 medaling nations top 10?” he asked. “It’s not that athletic prowess is completely independent from wealth and population.
“These nations have more resources at their disposal,” he added.
The model, which was concocted by Johnson and former student assistant Ayfer Ali in 1999 at Harvard, also considers a country’s climate and the advantages of hosting.
This year, a booming economy and polluted air will help China take home the most gold medals — 44, to be exact.
“China has the positive end of all the factors,” said Johnson, citing better tolerance to pollution and the country’s politics.
“Single regimes have done a better job at identifying athletes early,” he said.
That may be true, but he still has the United States snatching up the most overall medals with a total of 103. U.S. athletes are expected to earn 33 golds, while Russia will grab 28 gold medals and 95 total.
Italian Olympic official Luciano Barra has a conflicting prediction. He announced last week that the United States would earn 11 more gold medals than China and 101 medals overall.
Johnson also did the math for the Turin, Athens, Sydney and Salt Lake City Olympics.
In the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, the United States snatched 25 medals — nine of them gold. The formula predicted eight gold wins.
For 2004 in Athens, Johnson said the United States would win 103 medals, 37 of them gold. That year, the Americans won 103 medals — 36 gold.
The formula has had its share of misses. Before the 2004 Games in Athens, Johnson and Ali predicted China would win 39 overall and 15 gold. In reality, China took home 63 and 32, respectively.
China’s tough to call because of its fast-growing economy, Johnson said.
Steve Graff: 303-954-1661 or sgraff@denverpost.com
How they’ll finish
Colorado College economics professor Daniel Johnson uses population, per-capita income, climate and political structure to forecast how each nation’s athletes will perform at the Olympics. Here’s his top 10 forecast for Beijing:
Nation Total Gold
United States 103 33
Russia 95 28
China 89 44
Germany 66 18
Japan 37 16
Hungary 31 10
Italy 29 8
Great Britain 28 3
France 27 5
Australia 26 2
