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Olympic swimming – Quantitative bettor Drew Dinsick swam competitively for 17 years, including four years in college. He uses this intimate knowledge of the sport to handicap the Olympics.
On a recent episode of The Football Analytics Show, Drew noted that five men have a great chance to win the 100m backstroke. While American Ryan Murphy is the all time best at this event, Apolos Christou of Greece has a best time within 0.01 second of Murphy this season.
There is value in Apolos Christou +600 to win the men’s 100m backstroke at DraftKings, as Drew thinks the price should be +250. Catch more of Drew Dinsick’s Olympics insights on the most recent episode of The Football Analytics Show, and follow him on social media.
Men’s Olympic 1500m, Track and Field – After winning the World Championship 1500m last year, Great Britian’s Josh Kerr said that second place running Jakob Ingebrigtsen was “surrounded by so many yes-men that you don’t realize you have a weakness.”
This year, Ingebrigtsen said he could beat Kerr blindfolded after the latter’s 2-mile indoor world record. The war of words makes for a fantastic 1500m Olympic final.
Kerr has won the last two head to head meeting against Ingebrigtsen: the World Championship 1500m last year and the mile at Prefontaine in May. However, Ingebrigtsen became the 4th fastest ever at the 1500m with a 3:26.73 clocking at Monaco in July, more than two seconds faster than Kerr has ever run.
In the Olympic final, Ingebrigtsen will try to pull away from the field over the last lap and a half, and he should be favored to win. However, Ingebrigtsen at -250 to win the 1500m implies too high a win probability. If Kerr can stay close, he can win in the last 100 meters. There is value in Josh Kerr +250 to win the Olympic 1500m (value at FanDuel).
Big Ten Football – Every off season, ESPN’s Bill Connelly writes about all 135 FBS football teams, a key component of my college football preparation. In his article on the Big Ten, he notes the following (the team’s rank by his numbers in parentheses):
- Ohio State (2nd) has a defense that is the single-most proven unit in the country (although Georgia fans will disagree).
- Oregon (3rd) WR Tez Johnson was targeted 34 times on passes that went at least ten yards in the air, and he caught 22 for 623 yards. He is a beast.
- Michigan (6th) hired NFL veteran Wink Martindale as defensive coordinator, and he’ll have nine players that played at least 200 snaps last season on a defense that led Michigan to the national championship.
- Penn State (7th) QB Drew Allar has a canon for an arm but doesn’t use it. In six games against top 20 defenses last season, he had no picks but a 56% completion percentage for 9.2 yards per completion.
Bill’s content requires an ESPN+ subscription but is well worth it.
Optimizing swimming performance – University of Virginia (UVA) math professor Ken Ono works in number theory, but he also helps swimmers get to the Olympics. One fifth of the United States Olympic team are UVA athletes.
Ono started by figuring out how to strap sensors like accelerometers on swimmers. He then uses this data to analyze technique and optimize race strategy through simulations. A recent article in Quanta goes into more details about Ono’s work.
Analytics humor – The ladies love a freak. Make sure you get to at least :13 of this :24 video.
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