The opening ceremony of the London Olympics will start in less than eight hours' time and no, I am not going to watch it at such an unearthly hour; 3:55 on a Saturday morning. Anyway you might have read quite a bit about this quadrennial event in the papers and I am going to give my predictions about it here.
Sprinting
Usain Bolt should be able to defend the gold medal he won four years ago in the 100m and 200m races by a fraction, beating Yohan Blake, Asafa Powell, Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay in the process. Although all are very strong challengers, Blake and Gatlin would be the harder opponents for Bolt.
Hurdles
Dayron Robles of Cuba will defeat is Chinese arch-rival Liu Xiang simply because I do not support China and they have far too many medals to win at the Games. Go Robles!
Swimming
Michael Phelps is still looking invincible since those days in Beijing but with his countryman Ryan Lochte in red-hot form, the six-time World Swimmer of the Year might not be able to hog the headlines on sports pages this time. I fancy Lochte to come up tops in at least two events.
Football
People seem to be focusing on Brazil (because Argentina and Messi are not participating this time), Spain (because they are the World and Euro champions) and Great Britain ('cause they're the bloody hosts). But all of them seem to forgotten about Uruguay. Yes, they will be the unexpected gold-medallists.
Basketball
What is there to talk or elaborate about? With America aka The Dream Team having a place in the tournament, who else is capable of claiming gold? Spain the 2008 runners-up? Dark horse Argentina? Or how about a Yao Ming-less China? No, Jeremy Lin is a Taiwanese.
Badminton
The men's singles is easily a grudge match consisting of China's Lin Dan and Lee Chong Wei from Malaysia. If everything goes (smoothly) according to the script, the final should be Lin versus Lee. It is not hard to see who I will be rooting for. Malaysia Boleh!
Table Tennis
As much as I would like to see China getting thrashed by Singapore and the latter being crowned champions, this looks highly unlikely. The mighty PRC would be out in full force with their world-class athletes like Ding Ning, Li Xiaoxia and Wang Hao.
Anything except gold is unacceptable. However, getting silver and irritating the Chinese players in a tense final are still possible for the Singapore team. Expect the finals to either end quickly or last for a long time if you get what I mean.
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