This week I’ve an Olympics related poll for you. I think I must be naturally pessimistic but when I saw the odds on Great Britain’s prospective gold medal counts I thought I’d stumbled onto a great bet. The bookies seem to think that GB (“Team GB” as the organisers love saying) will win around 22-23 gold medals. I couldn’t believe the figure was so high! Great Britain’s highest ever gold medal count was 19 in Beijing and the previous recent tallies were 19, 9, 11 and 1 in 2008, 2004, 2000 and 1996 respectively. Now I know that these numbers shouldn’t be treated as recent form figures exactly, but they are the best guide we have and 22-23 just looked ridiculously over optimistic to my pessimistic eyes. I suppose home home advantage is an obvious reason the record could be broken – but does this really make the athletes try harder? A better reason would be that GB athletes are undeniably better funded these days. On the negative side, Stuart Pearce dropping David Beckham must have shaved at least 10 gold medals off the prospective total. Perhaps I ought to have run this poll a month ago because the odds have fallen slightly since I first noticed this. But this week’s question is: How many gold medals will Great Britain win at the 2012 Olympics?
Answer this week’s poll and leave a comment with your Twitter username to be in with a chance of winning a €19.80 Irish Winter Festival token.
Congratulations to @TheClevelandBay for winning last week’s poll.
Similar to last time I reckon.
@superwombleuk
Not a strong group of athletes this time round, @fiercelyacute
We’ll defo do better. Athletes will be pumnped!
Not strong group
They seriously overperformed in Beijing, the cyclists were fantastic and they’ll be relying on them again except 4 years on Wiggins is 32 and putting in a huge effort in the Tour, Hoy is 36 and though in form can’t really be expected to win 3 like last time. Cavendish should be good for 1 though, still 8 golds from the cyclists will be tough to match let alone beat and they don’t have huge promise on the track either.
@dromosevkola
They are gonna flop big time
@therealdupho
17 – 20 frankly I wouldn’t of been surprised if the media where saying that GB could win every medal.
@pauldoc9
Team GB complete a clean sweep of all Olympic medals! … Mostly because the other athletes all got lost at Heathrow , really see Jessica Ennis and Phillips Idowu will bring home Gold medals for Team GB…they’re pretty much nailed-on tbh.
what annoys me is the short selective memories. Team GB had a very successful Chinese Olympics and won lots of medals. @djdoc2001
@bugsyshugars
Reckon China will clean up. Don’t see GB being able to significantly improve their haul in gold medals.
Definatly won’t will the football gold!
Brazil,Germany, Spain,Holland or Ghana probably.
@Paul_Romain
Home advantage will at least see us match Beijing haul
@ConHarkinz
20+ and Mo Farah will win half of them
@Leprecahaun42
no way
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17-20, I guess. And what about Ireland?
between 15-22 imo.cant see an amazing haul to be honest…@pcbunter
@steclarke7 on twitter 17-20 golds cant see 15-22 as an option paul connolly lol
well we wont win the footy
@JakeySelf
Ive heard Becks no play cause he heard John Terry vacationing in LA this summer….
@ironnutzpoker