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The battle to climb from fourth could be as fierce as that for gold at the London Olympics.
As they look for any edge in their Games rivalry, Australia and Great Britain have both targeted converting dozens of fourth places at international events in 2011 into medals at this year’s Olympics.
A projected medals table by sports statistics group Infostrada published in British newspaper The Times this week predicted Britain and Russia would record 21 fourths each in London, more than any other nation.
The Australian Olympic Committee’s figures late last year show Australia had 37 fourth or fifth finishes in world championship and equivalent events in 2011.
Lifting one of those athletes from just out of the placings onto the dais will be crucial in the contest for fourth place on the final Games medals table.
The jostling in London behind the big three – China, the United States and Russia – is predicted to be tight, with the AOC benchmark figures putting Australia fourth with 15 gold, followed by Britain, Japan, France and Germany all with 14.
On the overall tally, however, Australia falls to eighth place with a total of 35 medals, including 12 silver and seven bronze. Britain has a forecast total of 58, including 29 silver and 15 bronze.
“Our focus is to convert those fourths and fifths into medals to lift the volume of our medals and at the same time ideally taking away a medal from the Germans, or Great Britain or the Japanese or the French to elevate our position and downscale their position,” said Australia’s chef de mission Nick Green.
“There’s a very clear strategy within our sports and the Australian Sports Commission and the AIS to continue focussing on those fourths and fifths and at the same time there’s a new level of enthusiasm that Australians are on a wave of peaking at the right time.”
British Olympic Association chief executive Andy Hunt, likewise, said the host nation was throwing all the resources it can into elevating those fourths into at least bronze medals.
“It is vitally important to translate as many of the fourth, fifth and sixth-place finishes from major international competitions in 2011 into podium finishes at London 2012,” Hunt wrote in his blog on the BOA’s website on Tuesday.
“The 21 fourth-place finishes that Infostrada are projecting is too many.”
Four Australian swimmers finished fourth at the world championships in Shanghai last year and six came fifth, with Emily Seebohm twice missing bronze by .06 of a second when she finished fourth in the 100m backstroke and fifth in the 50m backstroke.
Three crews were just out of the medals at the world rowing titles, including Olympic men’s double sculls champions, David Crawshay and Scott Brennan, while two cycling teams were fourth at their world championships.
Historically, the benchmarking figures have been accurate for overall medal tallies, while gold has been harder to predict.
The 2003 figures before the Athens Games predicted 14 gold, three fewer than Australia eventually won, but the predicted total of 50 was one more than the reality.
In the 2008 Beijing Games, the team fell well short of the benchmark of 20 gold with 14, but the total figure of 46 medals was two more than predicted.