Japanese baseball manager Senichi Hoshino called it "the medal that shines the brightest," and winning a gold medal is the dream of every amateur athlete around the world. With all the political controversy surrounding the 2008 Olympic Games, hosted by China, it's easy to forget that, in the end, these are sporting events, with potential gold medal counts for each nation furiously projected by forecasters from Sheffield Hallam University in the UK to the Sports Industry Research Center.
So which country is going home with the most golds? I teamed up with Darren Everson and The Wall Street Journal to project medal counts for all countries in the 31 Olympic event categories. We took into account recent national and international competitions in every Olympic sport and interviews with experts. Then, instead of anointing an absolute first-, second- and third-place finisher in each event, we assigned probabilities to the top medal contenders.
Then we tallied those probablities and ran 1,000 simulations to calculate the chances of a host of outcomes, like China's winning the gold-medal count. Here's our prediction:
| 2008 Olympic Medal Projections |
| Nation | Most Golds
(Possible Golds) | Most Medals
(Possible Medals) |
| United States | 47 (302) | 107 (939) |
| China | 38 | 83 |
| Russia | 28 | 72 |
| Australia | 17 | 43 |
| Germany | 15 | 45 |
Although there has been speculation that, armed with home-field advantage, China will win the gold medal count for the first time ever, in our 1,000 simulations the United States won the most gold medals 903 times, China 74 times, and in 23 simulations they tied.