Goldman Sachs predicts Team GB to win six fewer gold medals at Rio 2016

The world's largest investment bank has released its predictions for the upcoming Rio Olympics - and it doesn't make good reading for Team Great Britain.

Goldman Sachs has used a system of macroeconomics in order to determine how many medals participating nations at the 2016 games will chalk up, and it believes that Britain will win 6 fewer than when the event was hosted in London 4 years ago.

Team GB are expected to win 23 gold medals, along with the same trajectory for other medals, which would send its total haul down to 59 from 65.

The US and China are once again predicted to take up the two top spots ahead of Britain, with Brazil expected to take advantage of being the host nation to increase their medal collection by adding five overall.

Russia is estimated to be the biggest loser at the Games, after a doping scandal which has left the majority of the country's athletes barred from competing. Goldman predicts a 24 medal drop in their haul.

Goldman used a variety of contributing factors to come to the conclusions they have, although they admit that it's a very rough guide to predicting results.

However, the bank accurately predicted the UK's medal tally in 2012, as well as the top 11 nations in terms of success at the London games.

“Without an in-depth knowledge of elite athletes, recent performance metrics, and event details, it would be surprising if broad econometric exercises based on macroeconomic relationships weren’t only a very rough guide to predicting Olympic success," said the report.

“Still, the predictive success of our last effort suggests that at least at the level of a country it may be possible to identify the ingredients of winning.”

It argued that the level of economic health is a barometer for how well athletes perform at the event, as teams with better facilities are more likely to perform well.