under-over, afford little consideration for the sheer whim and caprice of sports, the glorious unpredictability of predictions.Gracenote, which puts metadata and content recognition technology through the forecasting wringer, had presaged on its virtual medal table — just before the Beijing Olympics launched — that
Applied computation that, just for instance, never so much as sniffed a podium finish for a group of Canadian ski-jumping mooks who, yumpin’ yimini, soared way off the radar this week for a sport that is comatose in Canada, with a team that trains in Slovenia., Canada’s first ever ski jumping medal. Give it up for: Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes, Matthew Soukup, Alexandria Loutitt, Abigail Strate.
By the time they were getting their real medals, next day, their phones had been blowing up with messages and congratulations. “All of us are pretty overwhelmed, just staring at our phones going nuts,’’ laughed Boyd-Clowes. When the sun rises in Beijing on Day 8, Saturday, the Canada collection: One gold, four silver, seven bronze. Knotted with ROC for medal totals, but down when measured by gold. And, for what it’s worth, a slight bump for Canada on the updated Gracenote prediction tally to 25.