2018 Winter Olympics Betting Predictions for Medals

The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, already promise several differences from the 2014 games in Sochi. In the Russian Games, the warm temperatures made the needed snowy surfaces difficult to come by; in South Korea, the temperatures are hovering just above zero degrees Fahrenheit. The two Koreas are competing under one unified flag, and the Russians — expected to dominate the Winter Games in most years — are banned as a nation from competing because of the systematic cheating that they used to gather medals by the boatload in Sochi, but many Russian athletes have passed their own individual protocols and will compete as Olympic Athletes from Russia, marching under the Olympic flag. So this could be a wide-open Olympics as far as medals go. For sports betting enthusiasts, we’ve put together a set of predictions for you to use as you consider your Olympic betting.

2018 Winter Olympics Betting Predictions for Medals

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Canada will win the gold in men’s hockey

The play won’t be at the same level as it has been in previous Games, because the National Hockey League is not suspending its season for an Olympic break. Team Canada’s players have a combined 5,544 games of NHL experience but have since moved on to minor league play or have retired from the league. That combined experience should vault them to the gold. It’s been 38 years since that vaunted “Miracle on Ice” that saw the USA win gold at Lake Placid, and I don’t see any other teams coming out of nowhere to take down the Canadian level of experience.

Germany will win the total medal count

The disqualification of Russia means that the country will not have an official medal count. Many of the Russian athletes who are competing as individuals will still rake in the medals, but the country that now has the most skilled athletes in the individual competitions is Germany (with Norway close behind). Canada will win many of the team events, such as curling and ice hockey, but those team sports only count as a single medal toward the country’s count.

Lowell Bailey will medal in biathlon for the United States

The United States has never had a medalist in biathlon (a combination of cross-country skiing and marksmanship with a rifle). Lowell Bailey came in eighth at Sochi in the men’s 20K individual biathlon, which is his best finish ever, and he enters his fourth Olympics with a great chance to end up on the podium. Tim Burke is also appearing in his fourth Olympics in the men’s biathlon and is actually ranked #29 in the men’s classification internationally.

Nathan Chen will win the gold in men’s figure skating for the United States

In Sochi, there were no American individual figure skaters who pulled in a medal. However, Chen figures to change all that. Just 18, he comes in off a season in which he won every contest he entered. On January 6, he won his second consecutive gold at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, and at the national championships in 2017, he did something that no man had ever done before: land five quadruple jumps within in one program. That multiple quad program could be his ticket to a gold, as it is a technique that very few men’s skaters attempt in the Olympics.

Short Takes

Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud fractured a knuckle in the Super-G Alpine skiing event in his 2006 debut. Now he stands favored to win the gold…Marcel Hirscher from Austria finished just .01 second out of first place at worlds in the Alpine combined and fractured his ankle in a giant slalom event in August; he should have the motivation to take the gold in combined and in slalom in Pyeongchang…Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin from the U.S. are favored to take the gold in the women’s downhill and the women’s combined, respectively…expect Germany to dominate the two-man and four-man men’s bobsled.