Rosie MacLennan won Canada's only gold at the London 2012 Games in trampoline.Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail
The Olympic overseer has Canada doubling its gold medal efforts at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro while moving up 10 places in the overall medal count.
Unfortunately, it won't be enough to lift Canada into the top 25 nations, according to Luciano Barra, the former director general for the Italian Olympic Committee who has been tabulating pre-Olympic trends for decades.
Using results from various world championships, Barra has made projections for the Summer and Winter Olympics and done so with a high degree of accuracy.
For Rio, Barra has Canadian athletes taking home two gold medals, eight silver and eight bronze for a total of 18 medals. That would put Canada in 26th place, given how the International Olympic Committee ranks nations by the number of gold medals won.
At the 2012 London Olympics, Rosie MacLennan won the women's trampoline event to take home Canada's lone gold medal. That, along with five silver and 12 bronze, had Canada in 36th spot.
In Beijing, Canada won three gold, nine silver and seven bronze to finish in 19th place.
Barra is well-known in Olympic circles. He has been a member of the IOC co-ordination commission and has worked with several cities to help them secure a winning bid to host the Olympic Games.
He has always qualified his medal counts as "projections, not predictions." In Beijing, in 2008, Barra said Great Britain would win a total of 48 medals. It won 47. At the same Olympics, Barra had the U.S. first in most gold medals and most medals overall. The U.S. won the most medals, 110, while China won the most gold with 51.
As for Vancouver, Barra went on record saying Canada would win the most medals, 29. The Canadian team won 26 medals but set a Winter Olympic record by claiming the most gold medals, 14, as a host nation.
The big winners in Rio de Janeiro will be the U.S. (35 gold, 88 medals overall) followed by China (32 gold, 80 overall) and Russia (28 gold, 88 overall).
Barra has Canada finishing behind Colombia (three gold) and just ahead of Denmark.