2002 commonwealth games predictions – revisited

We often stick our heads on the block and make predictions as to who will be in which teams and who will win what, and as is now customary, we revisit them to see just how well we did. This years’ Commonwealth games are no exception as we take a look at how our predictions stood up to the reality.

The first thing to note was that our prediction included 10 gold medals for the home nations and it was the most pleasing prediction to have been wrong about, as England and Scotland returned with 11 golds between them, but as usual it was all about how many medals the Australians would win. In the end they won two more than anticipated, as they profited from a poor Canadian showing, along with Zimbabwe and South Africa. In terms of the individual events, we predicted the winners correctly in 24 of the 38 events, but it is worth noting that predicting an Aussie win in every single event would have been closer to the actual results!

So without further ado, here’s how our prediction panned out:

Swimming gold medal table (predicted numbers in brackets):
  1. Australia – 25 (23)
  2. England – 10 (9)
  3. Scotland – 1 (1)
  4. Zimbabwe – 1 (0)
  5. South Africa – 1 (0)
  6. Canada – 0 (5)
    NOTE: table excludes EAD events



individual event predictions:

Men Result Women Result
50 freestyle Mark Foster (ENG) Roland Schoeman (RSA) Alison Sheppard (SCO)
100 freestyle Ian Thorpe (AUS) Sarah Ryan (AUS) Jodie Henry (AUS)
200 freestyle Ian Thorpe (AUS) Elka Graham (AUS) Karen Pickering (ENG)
400 freestyle Ian Thorpe (AUS) Elka Graham (AUS) Rebecca Cooke (ENG)
800 freestyle Rebecca Cooke (ENG)

1500 freestyle Grant Hackett (AUS)
50 backstroke Matt Welsh (AUS) Jennifer Carroll (CAN) Dyana Calub (AUS)
100 backstroke Matt Welsh (AUS) Sarah Price (ENG)
200 backstroke Matt Welsh (AUS) James Goddard (ENG) Sarah Price (ENG)
50 breastroke James Gibson (ENG) Zoë Baker (ENG)
100 breastroke Darren Mew (ENG) Adam Whitehead (ENG) Liesel Jones (AUS)
200 breastroke Jim Piper (AUS) Liesel Jones (AUS)
50 butterfly Geoff Heugill (AUS) Ros Brett (ENG) Petria Thomas (AUS)
100 butterfly Geoff Heugill (AUS) Petria Thomas (AUS)
200 butterfly James Hickman (ENG) Justin Norris (AUS) Petria Thomas (AUS)
200 I.M Brian Johns (CAN) Justin Norris (AUS) Marianne Limpert (CAN) Kirsty Coventry (ZIM)
400 I.M Brian Johns (CAN) Justin Norris (AUS) Liz Warden (CAN) Jenny Reilly (AUS)
4×100 freestyle Australia Australia
4×200 freestyle Australia Australia England
4×100 medley Australia Australia