• The Times has devised the Virtual Medal Table with Infostrada Sports, a Dutch sports statistics company that has the most comprehensive database of sports statistics in the world.
• For the 26 summer Olympic sports, every significant result is hoovered up into its database and it is by leaning on that body of information that we can tell you how the world of Olympic sport looks fewer than 18 months away from London 2012.
• The Virtual Medal Table is purely statistics based; there is no subjective opinion here, it takes no account of injury or good fortune. The maths is complicated but is worked out on four factors:
1, Athlete performance Where an athlete finishes in an event — 1st, 2nd, 3rd up to 8th — is assessed.
2, Time The VMT has taken on board results from the start of the Beijing Games in 2008, but more recent results are given a higher weighting.
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3, The importance of the event A World Championship weighs more than a European.
4, Strength of competition within an event We calculate the variance — standard deviation — and that influences our results.
• The medal table, therefore, is not a predictor of how the medals will fall in 2012. It is an assessment of form, showing how the Olympics would look if they were held today.