Sports Desk :
The United States of America are almost certain to retain their supremacy in the World Olympic Games 2016 whose latest edition begins tonight (Friday) in Rio de Janeiro, capital of Brazil though opening rounds in certain events began on August 3, 2016-two days before the opening ceremony, and the Games will formally run from 5 August to 21 August 2016.
A record number of countries are participating in a record number of sports. 11,239 athletes from 206 National Olympic Committees (NOCs), including first time entrants Kosovo and South Sudan, are scheduled to take part. With 306 sets of medals, the games will feature 28 Olympic sports – including rugby sevens and golf, which were added by the International Olympic Committee in 2009. These sporting events will take place at 33 venues in the host city and at 5 venues in the cities of São Paulo (Brazil’s largest city), Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Brasília (Brazil’s capital), and Manaus.
About 11, 239 athletes from 207 countries and autonomous regions will compete in 306 events of 28 disciplines.
The number of athletes of some of the countries are: USA 550, Brazil 464, Australia 405, China 398, France 396, Great Britain 366, Japan 339, Russia 278, Canada 309, Spain 301, Poland 242, Argentina 212, South Korea 203, India 120, Turkey 102, Iran 62, North Korea 39, Iraq 22, Bosnia 10, Saudi Arabia 9, Kosovo 8, Bangladesh 7, Pakistan 7, Syria 7, Palestine 6, Afghanistan 3 and Equatorial Guinea 2.
The most attractive discipline is field & track followed by swimming. Soccer is not so popular in the Olympic games due to absence of the world class players like Messi.
The most hopeful discipline for Bangladesh to secure gold is shooting. We do not know how far our shooters will be able to challenge world class shooters from China, Germany, Russia and Italy.
The predicted overall medal tally is under: USA 98, China 84, Russia 77, Great Britain 62, Japan 46, Germany 42, Australia, Brazil and France 33 each, and Italy, South Korea 27 each.
But this doesn’t take into account the disqualification of many Russian athletes. A very crude way of doing this would be to take the two categories of event where all Russian athletes have already been banned – track and field, and weightlifting – and to re-allocate the 24 medals Russia won in these events in 2012.
Finally let us hope for the best.
