These are the athletes tipped to fuel Australia’s record Olympic medal haul

Paris: Australia’s Olympic team in Paris is forecast to be the most productive to leave our shores, with authoritative pre-Games modelling calculating a final haul of 54 medals, including 15 gold.

According to a virtual medal tally compiled by Gracenote, a global data and technology company that analyses the major competition form of all athletes and teams heading into the Olympics, Australia are likely to better their record tally from Athens 20 years ago, when in the afterglow of a home Olympics they won 50 medals.

Kaylee McKeown and Ariarne Titmus are forecast to win six gold medals between them.Credit: Getty

If the predictions prove accurate, Australia will finish sixth for gold medals won and fifth for total medals. Australia’s largest ever tally was in Sydney, when they automatically qualified for all sports and won 58 medals.

The Paris bolter is tipped to be the host nation, with Gracenote predicting the French will finish third on the gold-medal tally with a staggering 27 gold, and 60 overall. France won 10 gold medals in Tokyo. The US are forecast to top the medal table for a fourth consecutive Olympics.

In Paris, as in Tokyo, neither the Australian Olympic Committee nor the Australian government have set hard medal targets. Where previously the AOC made clear its expectation of a top-five finish on the final tally of Olympic nations, current team management believes the additional pressure this heaped on athletes was counterproductive.

Australian chef de mission Anna Meares, a former track cyclist who medalled at three consecutive Olympics, said she wished the AOC didn’t have medal targets when she was racing.

“I went from my first Games loving trying to win to my last Games fearing what happened when I didn’t,” she said in Paris on Monday. “A lot of that was what you guys were going to write and what those headlines were, and what that failure was going to be perceived as.

“I came home from my last Games with a sixth medal, a bronze medal, and I was actually greeted by people back home saying we’re sorry, we’re disappointed you didn’t win gold in your last campaign.

“Sometimes we forget how many people are in the competition and how hard it is to win and how rare the opportunity to compete in the Olympic Games and be an Australian is, let alone being able to bring home a medal, let alone being able to bring home gold.

“That has probably shaped my philosophy around what the measure of success is for this team.”

Australian chef de mission Anna Meares.Credit: Louise Kennerley

The Australians, particularly the swimmers, thrived in Tokyo under the new approach. For Paris, the Gracenote predictions ride heavily on the back of the world-beating women swimmers, who are forecast to win five individual events and three relays.

The Dolphins are due to arrive in Paris on Wednesday from their training camp in Canet-en-Roussillon on the Mediterranean coast and take their first dip in the Olympic pool, which has been constructed for these Games inside Paris La Defense Arena.

According to the Gracenote analysis, Australia’s Olympics will get off to a spectacular start on the first night of the swimming competition, with Ariarne Titmus forecast to defend her Olympic 400m freestyle title against America’s Katie Ledecky and Canada’s Summer McIntosh and the Australian team to continue its winning run in the 4x100m freestyle relay.

Titmus is tipped to finish with two individual golds and a silver and Kaylee McKeown with another brace of backstroke golds, despite the blistering, 100m world record time set by Regan Smith at last month’s US trials. Mollie O’Callaghan is forecast to win gold in the 100m freestyle and silver behind Titmus in the 200m, while Cameron McEvoy (50m freestyle) and Zac Stubblety-Cook (200m breaststroke) are predicted to win their specialist events.

Qin Haiyang celebrates his 2023 world championship win against Australia’s Zac Stubblety-Cook in the men’s 200m breaststroke.Credit: Getty Images

If Stubblety-Cook defends his title from Tokyo, he will have to hold off China’s world record holder Qin Haiyang.

Australia’s prospects extend well beyond the pool across 15 events. If the Gracenote forecasts hold true, Jessica Fox will leave Paris with another three Olympic medals to add to the four she has already won and yachtsman Matt Wearn will defend his laser class title from Tokyo.

Despite Australia’s extraordinary depth in middle-distance running, the athletics predictions are all in field events, with high jumping pair Nicola Olyslagers and Eleanor Patterson tipped to finish on the dais behind Ukraine’s world record-holder Yarolsava Mahuchikh, Mackenzie Little to take javelin bronze and Nina Kennedy to finish second in the pole vault.

Meares said the strength of the Australian team was its breadth of talent.

“The more Australian Olympians we have, the more Australian Olympic medallists that we have, the more influence and the [greater] role models they are within their communities back home,” she said. “That is a beautiful part of Olympic sport.”

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