Team GB may have stunned the sporting world with its impressive medal haul at the London Olympics but the performance will have come as no surprise to the geeks at Goldman Sachs who saw their pre-Games predictions proved almost spot on.
In a report on the economics of the Olympics published on the eve of the 2012 Games, Goldman analysts José Ursúa and Kamakshya Trivedi used the proprietary GS Growth Environment Scores to help forecast how many medals countries would win.
As noted by Business Insider, the model has proved impressively accurate for the Great Britain team; correctly predicting a total of 65 medals, albeit with 30, instead of the actual 29, golds.
In fact, the analysts' forecasts for most of the top countries, including the USA, China, Russia and South Korea, came within a handful of medals of the final standings.
The one nation to decisively defeat the model has been Australia, which has endured a painful Games. It fell well short of the expected 15 golds and fifth place on the medal table, finishing 10th with just seven golds.
Despite the Aussie blip though, London proved a good Games for Goldman, helping to restore some dignity following an embarrassing 2010 World Cup which saw it outperformed in the prediction stakes by German celebrity psychic, Paul the octopus.