How to hedge against American Sports Imperialism
Welcome to part 13 of my Ramblin’ to Paris series. Check out the previous piece where I explained my flight plan and the tips I received that might be helpful the next time you travel to Europe.
Firstly, my apologies for such a long gap between RtP articles. I thankfully have begun a new job and that has taken priority, so the time to get this series done has dwindled, but with just under 100 days before the Opening Ceremonies, there will be more for me to say in the coming weeks.
This week, I wanted to present one of my favorite Olympic tradition I’ve done dating back to the 2016 Rio Games, a betting pool entitled The Great Satan Pool, which has become a fantastic tool for my friends to watch the more unique events with a little bit of skin in the game, but also a way to learn about what countries are good at what events. I was introduced to this pool by my friend Shane Ryan, so all credit for this piece goes to him.
The premise is simple: bet against the United States in 15 different disciplines. In an event where I want nothing more than complete American domination across the board, doing this exercise always helps me temper my expectations that we’ll just win everything because we can.
The rules are as follows:
- Pick 15 specific Olympic events (ie, “Track & Field, 100m, men”, not just “Track and Field”), and choose the country you believe will win that event. You may choose each country only once. You may not choose America.
- Rank these 15 picks by priority. The one you are most confident about should be ranked 15, and the one you feel least secure about should be 1.
- The same “sport,” or “discipline” can’t be used twice. If they say it’s a different sport, it’s a different sport. For example, all swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, basketball, and bicycle events are under the general umbrella of their sport. The only exception we make is separating track and field into the sports of track…and field.
- You may ONLY pick events in which an American is participating.
- Scoring: If your country wins gold, you win 4x your priority value. Silver: 2x. Bronze: 1x. Nothing: 0 points. No bonus points if your country has multiple podium placements.
- THE GREAT SATAN CLAUSE: If America beats your country and makes the medal stand, you just got Satan’d, son. Not only do you lose any points for that event: You lose 1x the value of your pick if America takes bronze, 2x if they take silver, 4x if they take gold. If neither your country or America makes the medal stand, it’s just zero points flat even if America beats you.
- Depending on the host country, an additional rule will be thrown in where you must pick the host country in at least one event. In this year’s case, it will be France. The rule extends to where if France doesn’t medal in the event you pick them in AND America medals, it’s an automatic ejection from the pool. No points, no money, au revoir.
What I’ve enjoyed about this pool though is that it forces me to actually get a sense of what the landscape is in a bunch of those sports we usually only think about come Olympic season. This is how I know China has been generally unbeatable in table tennis, the Polish are good at ski jumping, and Germany basically winse every luge/skeleton/bobsled event aside from the women’s monobob, among other random Olympic tidbits.
If you’re going to do this pool, the research can be daunting, but my shortcut has been to check the previous medal podiums at recent Olympics. Those can easily be found on Wikipedia or olympics.com, because there are plenty of events (especially in the summer) that the U.S. is not going to be competitive in. The trick is finding the events that a country far and away controls and hoping they don’t lose.
I’ll give out a couple easy ones: Russia to win artistic swimming and South Korea to win women’s team archery. Those have been locks for years and likely will be again.
But then on the flip side while in the midst of this pool, so many fun and chaotic moments pop up during the games because someone will unexpectedly have the U.S. competing in an event they usually don’t medal in, and it creates all sorts of chaos in the group chat. In Tokyo, it turned out the U.S. was good at judo of all things. By the end, it becomes a hilarious way to watch the Olympics for as little at $1.
Theoretically, you could throw a Georgia Tech rule in there somehow, but our current prospects (albeit I still have to do the real research on this) don’t look fantastic to get a medal via one of our athletes, so maybe I’ll punt that idea to 2028.
Jack Purdy is a non-revenue sports writer and co-host of Scions of the Southland for From the Rumble Seat. He previously served as The Technique’s assistant sports editor before graduating Georgia Tech in 2022. Follow Jack on Twitter @JackNicolaus
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