This article was originally posted in 2014, before the World Championships. In honor of the official beginning of “Olympic season,” we thought it would be good to revisit the projections and see which have changed. On a first glance, it seems unlikely that anybody is going 46.87 in the men’s 100 free, and perhaps not even 47.25. The women’s 100 back prediction, however, that once seemed impossible is now more-and-more likely with Emily Seebohm having gone under 59 seconds 10 times in 2015.
I bet you thought you were going to click on an inspirational, Olivier Poirier-Leroy article and learn how to be more awesome, or how to crush walls (literally and figuratively) with your brain.
You were wrong. This is a straight-up, Braden-Keith-style, swim-nerds, numbers post about a couple of guys named Joshua Neuloh and Thomas Kothe who have created a predictive model that they call “Swimnex“.
Among the touted success of this model at the 2012 Olympic Games included predicting the World Record race by Cameron can der Burgh within a difference of three-tenths of a second and forecasting the way through the stages of the women’s 50 free by an “average error of just .01%.”
For 2016, Neuloh, the mathematician behind the project, has ramped-up his prediction and used over 600,000 calculations to make predictions for the 2016 Olympics in the following headings:
- Champion
- Medalist
- Finalist
- Semi-Finalist
For each event.
He has also predicted that 6 new World Records will be broken, all on the women’s side:
- 100 back (57.90)
- 100 fly (55.57)
- 400 IM (4:27.38)
- 800 free relay (7:40.20)
- 400 medley relay (3:50.30)
While Neuloh wouldn’t reveal his full methodology, he looked at thousands of race results and tried to find patterns and account for influencing factors, including advancements in suit technology and the new starting block (which they found to have no significance).
In total, the models predict 14 World Records between now and the end of the Rio Olympics. The test will be whether or not Neuloh’s assumptions will create a better predictive success rate than our subjective assumptions. In the next few weeks, we will put together our own predictions for the 2016 Olympics, and let those sit in a time capsule to see who came out better just under two years out.
See the full predictions from Swimnex below:
Are you kidding? Peaty will be and already is further ahead in both breaststroke events…..
For the 50 and the 100 , yes , not for the 200 !
A 47.25 to even medal in the 100 that’s bananas. The winning time in London was .27 behind that and the winning time from Kazan was 47.84 and currently nobody and their mother can even come close to a 46
Funny to read this article now given it was posted a year ago… Some things have changed, others haven’t. Based on Kazan, some of the women’s events I would expect faster times especially in the freestyle events. On the men’s side I would say the freestyle times are predicted too fast.
The most interesting individual (As relays are always unpredictable) events will be:
Mens 100 free: Their is no favourite heading into 2016
Mens 200 free: Will Agnel come back? How much will Guy improve? Will Phelps swim? Could Biedermann somehow win? Could Izotov live up to his performances on relays? Lochte? Will Sun get back into 1:43 shape? Etc.
Mens 100 back: Will Grevers get back in shape? Or maybe Lacourt or Irie? Or will new talent take over like Larkin, Murphy, or Xu.
Mens 200 breast: This is the one record in swimming I will call weak. The record is 2:07 flat. 12 people excluding the world record holder have been under 2:08, I feel like this record… Read more »
Am wondering if the time “discrepancies” pointed out above from the predictions factor in that Rio will be in winter mode August 2016, not summer mode, with the historical average high temperature being approx. 71 F / 22 C, which may affect times. Still further, since finals will be late at night (thanks to pressure from American broadcasters!), keeping all the swimmers warm will be a big factor too. IMHO, any fully developed model would have to factor these in.
The 100 & 200 free on the men’s side is Wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too fast for the Gold. No one has even came remotely close to a 46.8 or a 1:42 in the past years / months and especially flat started with a jammer on? I don’t see that happening . Pretty believable the rest but those are just off the charts in my opinion
Some out ofbthis world predictions like the mens 100 free, but others are slower, for example ledecky has been 7 seconds faster in the 800
The predicted times for men’s 100 and 200 free are too fast in my opinion. I would be happy to be proven wrong.