FAKE RONJAN!!Russia gold medal - postmortem
So, we nailed our gold medal prediction for Russia in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (exactly 13 gold medals). That's pretty cool, right?
We won't spend too much time bragging. Rather, we'll just update the graphs we used last time to close the loop.
Russia's topline medal performance:
What a turnaround! This was their most medals -- gold or otherwise -- since Russia started competing as Russia. And even though there were more events this time around, they captured a higher share of gold medals than any Olympics in sixteen years:
Finally, we'll update our "host country lift chart". Russia had the strongest lift in performance vs. previous Olympics in a generation of Olympic games:
South Korea is the host in 2018 (Pyeongchang). If this site still exists in four years, maybe we'll do a forecast for them! They won 3% of the medals this time around (3 out of 99 events), so if you had to ask me now, I'd expect a lift similar to what Japan saw in 1998, putting them in the 6% - 8% of gold medals range.
This concludes your comprehensive coverage of the Olympic Games.
-rj