Fantasy Olympics 2024 Overview

 

Welcome to the 2024 Fantasy Olympics! We're using the same format as previous years with the same emphasis on allowing participants to spend as much or as little time/effort as they'd like. As a benefit to all of us (myself included) here is a review of how it all works:

Fantasy Olympics consists of two main activities, a draft before the Olympics and a daily choice during the Olympics.

• The Country Draft (Pre-Olympics) - During the month of July leading up to the Olympics, there will be a 60 country draft where each player will select between 6 and 8 countries based on the initial draft order. The countries you draft will become your roster and you score points for their medal success in selected events.

• The Daily Event Selection (During the Olympics) - During the Olympics, each player will independently choose an event for each day from a menu of 3 pre-selected Olympic events. The player will score for all of their drafted countries who medal in that event. As we've done in previous years, you'll have a submission form which will allow you to select all your events in advance (in the case you have a busy July/August), and will also allow you to change your event selection if you change your mind prior to the final day of the event.

The event selection is essentially a curated sampling of about 1/6th of the entire Summer Olympic Games schedule and it is recommended to take into consideration the Fantasy Olympics schedule while drafting countries.

The Details

The Country Draft:

• There will be six rounds of the draft, everyone will select at least six countries.
• First round draft order will be generated via random number generator.
• It is a snake-style draft (it will reverse order for the second round).
• With historical Olympic medal dominance from top countries (US, China, Russia, etc.), additional compensatory draft picks will be given to players who don't end up with the #1 overall draft pick.
• No trading of draft picks/countries between players.
  

The Daily Event Selection:

• Each day of the Olympics will have three events available to select from.
• Each player will independently select one of the three events for that day.
  
• Each player will score for any and all of their countries that medal in the event they select.
•  Gold = 6 points
•  Silver = 4 points
•  Bronze = 2 points
• In the instance that a single country earns multiple medals in an event, only the most valuable medal will count.

Let's look at some scoring examples from past Olympics:

2012 Men's 200m (T&F) Olympic Medalists:
Usain Bolt   Jamaica   Yohan Blake   Jamaica   Warren Weir   Jamaica

In 2012, if a player drafted Jamaica and selected this event, only Usain Bolt's Gold medal (6 points) counted. No points would be scored for the additional medals for Jamaica.

Now let's say you were building a strategy around distance events on the schedule and decided to draft the countries of Kenya & Ethiopia specifically for their historically dominant distance athletes:

2016 Women's 10km (T&F) Olympic Medalists:
Almaz Ayana   Ethiopia   Vivian Cheruiyot   Kenya   Tirunesh Dibaba   Ethiopia

Assuming you drafted both Ethiopia/Kenya and selected this event on the schedule, you would earn a total of 10 points, Ethiopia's Gold Medal (6 points) and Kenya's Silver Medal (4 points). The Bronze medal is disregarded as Ethiopia has already scored for one medal this event (Gold).

Team Events:

The event schedule focuses on a lot of events that take place over the course of a single day. This leaves out many events that take place over the course of the Olympics like Basketball, Volleyball or Water Polo. Six of these events were also selected:

• Men's Rugby Sevens
• Men's 3x3 Basketball
• Men's Football
  
• Women's Handball
  
• Men's Beach Volleyball
• Men's Water Polo

These events are also scored during Fantasy Olympics and at a premium. You don't need to do anything for these events (other than draft countries that have medal winning potential) and they reward slightly more points to countries that medal:

•  Team Gold = 10 points
•  Team Silver = 6 points
•  Team Bronze = 3 points
  

 

A Note on Russia:

Some of you may remember that mid way into our Country Draft during the 2016 Fantasy Olympics news came out that Russia might be banned from the 2016 Olympics due to repeated doping violations. The Russian Athletes competed under the ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) the last several Olympics.

Because of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, both Russia and Belarus are facing several restrictions - it is still a little bit unclear how this will look but most notably they are only allowed to send individual athletes (so Russia will not be present in team events).

As a result (and this has been true for the last few years) Russia isn't going to be participating under its own flag, and I don't believe they'll be competing under any alternative "ROC" name and flag. Our approach for the last few Olympics remains the same - if you draft "Russia" or "Belarus", you'll get all the Russian (or Belorussian) athletes that are cleared to compete. There aren't any "gotcha" moments for someone who wants to draft the Olympic athletes of Russia or any other country. So draft with confidence.