United States on Track for Most Olympic Medals

Right now the Netherlands has the most medals in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. They have 17 medals, followed closely by Russia and the United States with 16. The Dutch have amassed 16 of those medals in long track speed skating, the highest total of medals ever won by one country in any winter sport in the history of the Winter Olympics.

But they won’t hold on for most medals. There are only four events left in long track speed skating. And we are projecting them to win six medals in those four events, but a total of 23 medals in all sports will fall short.

Here is our current projected total, based on 56 of 98 total events completed:

In our original projection that we developed working with the Wall Street Journal we projected Norway to finish with the most medals. But the whole country of Norway is devastated by their poor performance, highlighted by a Norwegian cross-country skier’s mom telling her son, "You’re the worst Norwegian. You should go home."

Our original projection was:

Norway's projected medal count has dropped by eight medals. The US has dropped by one, but they are now on track for the most medals by the narrowest of margins over Canada.