Olympics Betting: Team Canada Preview
If you’re a Canadian of a certain age, you remember Greg Joy. He won silver in the men’s high jump at the 1976 Olympic Summer Games in Montreal, a highlight that was played every night on CBC along with the national anthem at the end of their broadcast schedule. Why Greg Joy? Because Canada didn’t win any gold medals that year.
Our fortunes have improved since then, and as a result so have the Olympics betting from a Canadian viewpoint. Subsequent Olympics have seen Canadians bring home multiple gold medals, climbing from around three during a typical non-boycotted Summer Games to a shiny total of seven at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which were delayed until 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Were those Tokyo Games a flash in the pan for Team Canada? Will we drop back down to three medals, or even worse, during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris? Judging by the Olympics odds at Bodog Sportsbook, we don’t have too much to worry about. Here are our best hopes for gold heading into Friday’s Opening Ceremony.
Summer McIntosh, Swimming
If there’s one household Canadian name that’s going to emerge from these Games, it’s Summer McIntosh. The 17-year-old phenom is already an Olympic veteran, having finished fourth at the women’s 400 metre freestyle in Tokyo; McIntosh is now the world record holder in the 400m individual medley, and our pick to take home the gold in both that event and the 200m butterfly.
McIntosh will get a few more cracks at the podium. She will presumably race in the 200m IM, where McIntosh is a good bet to medal, and at press time, she’s also pencilled in for the 400m freestyle, and as part of Team Canada’s entries in the 4x100m medley and 4x100m free.
It helps McIntosh’s profile that she’s the latest in a long line of top-shelf Canadian Olympic swimmers, from George Hodgson at the 1912 Stockholm Games to Maggie Mac Neil at the Tokyo Games. You may even recognize McIntosh’s mother: Jill Horstead, who was on Team Canada at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
McIntosh might be the best of the bunch. She’s the first Canadian ever to win two golds at a single World Championships, doing it in 2022 and again in 2023 – both times in the events we’ve got her down for winning again in 2024. McIntosh also bagged a pair of bronze medals last year in the 200 free and the 4×100 medley; with Mac Neil and other talented swimmers by her side, McIntosh will have every opportunity to rack up her medal count in Paris.
Marco Arop, Athletics
Aside from swimming, track and field is where Canada has enjoyed the most success – and notoriety – at the Olympics. Much of that success vanished when Ben Johnson was caught doping following the 1988 Seoul Games, but then Donovan Bailey came around and saved our sport.
Andre De Grasse is still around to carry the proverbial torch for our sprinters, but for a change, Team Canada’s best chance for athletics gold lies elsewhere, at least that’s what Bodog’s Olympics betting suggests. Marco Arop is the reigning world champion in the 800 metres, the first Canadian ever to win at this middle distance. Still in his prime at age 25, this will be Arop’s second Olympics, and he was setting personal and Canadian bests with each 800m race to close out the 2023 season.
Arop wasn’t even supposed to become a track star. After his family fled Sudan in the 1990s and eventually settled in Edmonton, Arol’s attention was on basketball, where he was good enough to receive a scholarship offer from Concordia University of Edmonton. But his high-school coach, Mike Wokcicki, told Arop he should try track and field instead. Good call.
Damian Warner, Athletics
We were hoping to tell you all about Pierce LePage, who also became this country’s first World Athletics champion in the decathlon in 2023. The Whitby, Ontario native was fifth in the decathlon at the 2020 Games, and second at the 2022 World championships before breaking through last year at age 27.
Alas, LePage was forced to leave Team Canada on July 17 with a back injury. But LePage wouldn’t have been the first Canadian decathlete to win Olympic gold; Damian Warner earned that distinction at the 2020 Games, setting the Olympic record with 9,018 points. LePage set his personal best of 8,909 points at the 2023 World championships.
While injuries have derailed LePage’s progress, Warner remains a threat after winning his eighth Hypomeeting Gotzis this past May in Austria. He’s our pick of the litter now that LePage is sidelined.
Christa Deguchi, Judo
When it comes to Canada’s long tradition of Olympic combat sports, you might think of boxers like Lennox Lewis and wrestlers like Daniel Igali. Canada has yet to win a gold medal in judo, but we think that drought will end in Paris when Deguchi takes the mat.
Deguchi is the world’s top-ranked judoka in the 57kg weight class – and we’re lucky to have her. Until 2014, Deguchi represented Japan on the world stage, but in 2017, she completed her switch to Canada after the mandated three-year waiting period imposed by the International Judo Federation.
Already a decorated gold medallist from the 2019 and 2023 World championships, Deguchi is in pole position to add to her total in Paris. We’re also keeping an eye on Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard in the 63kg division, where she ranks second in the world and took home bronze at the 2020 Games.
Philip Kim, Breaking
Is breakdancing a sport? It is at the Paris Olympics, and it’s not just a “demonstration” sport either – the Olympics did away with that designation after the 1992 Games in Barcelona. Breaking, sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding have all been granted full-medal status for 2024 Paris, and Canada is happy to claim Philip “Phil Wizard” Kim as one of breaking’s finest practitioners.
Born in Toronto and raised in Vancouver, Kim started breaking in 2009 at the age of 13, eventually dropping out of university to pursue it full-time. He made it pay by winning b-boy gold at the 2022 WDSF World Breaking Championship, and again at the 2023 Pan American Games.
New events like these are the hardest to predict when it comes to the Olympics betting – and for now, breaking isn’t part of the 2028 schedule for Los Angeles. But every medal counts, and Kim is the best in the world at what he does.
Other Contenders
While we’re focussing on the five athletes above to bring home the gold, there’s ample opportunity for Team Canada to add to our medal haul. Our rowers on the West Coast and paddlers back East are among the world’s finest; watch for Canada’s reigning gold-medal women’s eights team in the former, and the women’s 500m C-2 tandem of Katie Vincent and Sloan MacKenzie in the latter.
There’s also plenty of buzz for Canada’s chances in men’s basketball. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his teammates took home bronze at the 2023 World Cup, where they beat Team USA in the third-place game. As we go to press, Team Canada are the +1100 second favourites for Olympic gold, behind the US at –450. We’ve beaten them before, we can do it again.
Probably the most overlooked source for potential Canadian gold is in track and field – specifically the “field” part. Both Ethan Katzberg and Camryn Rogers won gold in the hammer throw at last year’s World’s, while Sarah Mitton took silver in the women’s shot put. We’d be talking about them more if Canada had a stronger Olympic lineage in the throwing events.
Let’s not completely overlook our sprinters while we’re at it. De Grasse may have lost a step in the 100m and 200m, but Christopher Morales-Williams is a fresh face on the 400m scene at age 19, setting the unofficial indoor record this past February at 44.49 seconds. Morales-Williams just turned pro earlier this month after winning both the indoor and outdoor NCAA 400m titles for the Georgia Bulldogs.
Before we wrap up, we’d easily have added Maude Charron to our golden list after she won the women’s 64kg class at the Tokyo Games – but then they got rid of the entire division. Charron has moved down to 59kg for Paris and has already set the Canadian record for this weight class, so there’s always hope she’ll be able to make the transition.
Gold Medal Target: 7
If you add up all of the specific gold medals we’re predicting above, you get six: two for Summer McIntosh, and one each for the remaining four hopefuls. And indeed, the Olympics betting at Bodog has Team Canada pegged with a total of 5.5 gold medals as we go to press.
The Over is priced at –150 for a reason. It’s very likely that Canada will sneak in at least one more gold from the vast pool of second-tier contenders. We don’t mean to be greedy here at Bodog, but given average luck, one of our two hammer-throw champions should come home with yet another gold medal.
Seven golds would be one of our best-ever hauls at the Olympics. We reached that peak in 1992 and again at the 2020 Games. Team Canada’s official record is 10 gold, set at the boycotted 1984 Games in Los Angeles. Why should we expect to reach those lofty heights again?
It’s partly because of the sheer number of athletes we’re sending. Look at how many people were on Team Canada in each of the last three Olympics, and how many gold medals we won:
– 2012 London: 273 athletes, two gold
– 2016 Rio de Janeiro: 314 athletes, four gold
– 2020 Tokyo: 381 athletes, seven gold
Sadly, LePage’s injury leaves our 2024 Paris cohort at 315 athletes (plus 22 alternates), bringing Team Canada down to the same size we were in Rio. But this is still one of the largest teams we’ve ever sent to the Olympics, so we’ll be getting more kicks at the can than usual.
We’re also looking at a betting total of 22.5 overall medals for Team Canada, and while the Under is favoured slightly at –125, we think Canada’s projections underestimate their chances at the newer events like breaking, while also missing out on up-and-comers like Morales-Williams in the 400m sprint.
What do you think of Team Canada’s chances at the 2024 Summer Olympics? Place your bets right now at Bodog Sportsbook, and stay tuned for the latest odds and analysis from the Paris Games.