Who are Canada's top Olympic gold-medal contenders?

Though the opening ceremony isn't until Friday, competition at the Paris Olympics begins tomorrow with some men's soccer and rugby sevens matches that you can stream live on CBC Sports' Olympic website and mobile app.

Since Canada didn't qualify for either event, I thought it might be good to spend today on some of the top Canadians to watch once the Games really get going.

According to the latest forecast from the data company Nielsen's Gracenote, Canadian athletes are expected to win seven gold medals in Paris. That's the same amount Canada won in 2021 in Tokyo, which matched the national record for a non-boycotted Summer Games. Gracenote's statistical model predicts Canada will win 21 medals overall in Paris, which would be three fewer than in Tokyo.

Here's a look at the six Canadians projected to capture a gold, with some analysis on where the Gracenote model might be too high or too low on them.

For help with that, I checked the betting odds for various events. The intention here is not to promote sports gambling (God knows we don't need more of that). Rather, I think betting markets are a useful forecasting tool because they express the collective knowledge of people who back their opinions with actual money.

Summer McIntosh (swimming)

These Summer Olympics might quickly become, well, the Summer Olympics as the 17-year-old phenom is favoured to win two gold medals and could reach several more podiums over the first nine full days of competition.

McIntosh's first Olympic medal could come as soon as Saturday in the women's 400m freestyle, where she'll battle Australia's Ariarne Titmus and American Katie Ledecky in what could be the most exciting swimming showdown of the Games. Gracenote's model has McIntosh missing