The United States is raking in the medals at the Paris Games and, with little signs of this slowing down, Team USA are currently projected to break a 40-year record.
Gracenote, a sport data business that makes predictions based on current performance so far, has waged that Team USA will take home a staggering 128 medals.
If this comes to fruition, not only will the United States top the medal count, but it would also be the most medals Team USA has won since the 1984 Los Angeles games where the final tally was 174.
The new data includes a predicted 42 gold medals, 42 silver and 44 bronze.
Gracenote estimate that China will come in second in the total medal count with 97 medals and that third position will go to host nation France (67).
Fourth and fifth position would go to Great Britain (63 medals total) and Australia (52).
Newsweek has contacted Gracenote, via their website, for comment.
So far
With 594 athletes, the U.S. has the largest delegation at this year’s games and are currently second in the medal table (which ranks nations by number of gold medals) behind China,.
Team USA has particularly excelled in athletics. Over the course of just a few hours on August 8, three golds were won in track and field – the Men’s 110m hurdles by Grant Holloway, the women’s 400m hurdles by Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Tara Davis-Woodhall took home the women’s long jump crown.
As of August 9, the U.S has won 104 medals, 30 of which are gold.
Beating a 40-year record
At the 1984 Games, the U.S won 83 gold, 61 silver and 30 bronze medals.
In retaliation to the American boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980, the Soviet Union and 14 Eastern Bloc satellite states refused to take part in the 1984 Los Angeles games. The absence of such fierce competition was one of the reasons why the U.S. scooped up so many medals.
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If anything, this makes this year’s projected medal haul even more impressive. This time round, only two nations are not competing – Russia and Belarus, who were banned after the International Olympic Committee voted to suspend them following the war in Ukraine. Typically, Russia has finished in the top five nations when it comes to overall medal count.
However, individuals from these nations are allowed to compete as ‘Individual Neutral Athletes’ so long as they abide by Olympic rules and don’t show any association or support for either Russia or Belarus.
Since athletes from Russia and Belarus have been banned from Olympic activities since February 2022, Gracenote did not include them in their data predictions.
If the U.S. wins the most medals at this Olympics, it would be the eighth successive time they have topped the medal count. Overall, the U.S. has won the most medals at a Summer Olympics 18 times.
The most Olympic medals ever won by the U.S. was 239 medals at the 1904 St.Louis Games, a games in which very few top-class athletes from outside North America participated.
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