The Olympics opening ceremony is this Friday, with the full programme of action starting on Saturday. As ever, stories and achievements will come thick and fast as we will become familiar with competitors we’ve barely heard of, over a wide range of sports.

Team GB is again expected to have a successful Olympics with UK Sport setting a target of 50-70 medals in total – it hopes around a third of those will be gold. This compares with 64 total medals in Tokyo, 67 in Rio and 65 in London.

These hopes have been boosted after dominant displays from Keely Hodgkinson (1:54.61 in the 800m) and Matthew Hudson-Smith (43.74 in the 400m) at Saturday’s Diamond League meeting in the London Stadium. These were imperious performances with the former smashing her personal best to set a national record (also the quickest time since Caster Semenya ran 1:54.60 in 2018) and the latter his own European record. For Hodgkinson in particular, at only 22, the world record is even coming into view (1:53.28 set in 1983). They are now around 4/11 and evens respectively for their Paris events and 7/2 and 20/1 for SPOTY.

Since the success of 2012, only Mo Farah has won a track or field gold for GB at the Games (Rio 2016, 4th SPOTY), so it is easy to imagine interest building around our medal hopes in the Stade De France this time round. GB also has Molly Caudery (at 15/8 for the pole vault) and Josh Kerr (2/1 for the 1500m) with good chances of gold (12/1 and 20/1 for SPOTY respectively).

Hodgkinson looks primed to attract the most attention, particularly as the 800m final looks like it will include multiple Brits, but there is the chance of more than one athletics gold which could lessen her impact to some extent. Hudson-Smith has the chance of medals in the relays too. That said, excellent GB performances can increase the overall interest and Hodgkinson is an obvious poster girl for GB at the Games.

Three Peat?

At a bigger price, away from the athletics, it may be worth taking a chance on Adam Peaty. He is seeking to win the 100m breaststroke title for a third time. Only Michael Phelps, of male swimmers, has won more than two golds in the same individual event.

Peaty achievements in the event are legendary. He remains the world record holder and holds the 14 fastest times ever recorded. However, since Tokyo 2021 Peaty has endured some troubled times.

At the 2022 Commonwealth Games Peaty was beaten for the first time since 2014. Following this, he went into what he describes as a ‘self-destructive spiral’, split from his partner and took a complete break from the sport.

In this time a new kid on the blocks arrived – China’s Qin Haiyang who won the 50m, 100m and 200m events at the 2023 world championships where he set a new 100m PB of 57.69.

However, at the GB swimming championships in April, Peaty announced to the world that he was back, winning in a time time of 57.94, the fastest in the world this year and just over a second outside his 2019 world record of 56.88.

Qin remains the favourite for Paris at evens but Peaty is not far behind at 13/10. If Peaty has trained on since April then he has a chance to complete an impressive comeback and get on the SPOTY podium (was third in 2021 after his gold in Tokyo). Qin can be covered as a hedge by backing him to win the event if required. The final is on Sunday at 20:44 BST.

Others of interest

There is always the possibility of a popular Olympian coming out of left field – Alistair Brownlee, Nick Skelton and Tom Daley come to mind recently. Other names to keep an eye on are Katarina Johnson-Thompson (heptathlon), Charlotte Dujardin (could win gold at a third successive Games in dressage), Helen Glover (returning to rowing in search of a third gold, now as a mother), Alex Yee (triathlon) and Daley (diving) again. But there will be new fan favourites with plenty of stories to unfold before we know who has captured the public’s imagine the most come SPOTY time in December.

Away from the Olympics, the market had recently been headed by Luke Littler (now 5/1) and Mark Cavendish (7/1) . Littler’s impact when reaching the PDC darts final at 16 years old in January has been sensational. He continues to compete on a level with the best in the world. It should be noted though that he didn’t win the PDC title and he could always be slotted into the Young SPOTY category (17 or under at the start of the year).

Cavendish’s search for a record breaking 35th Tour De France stage victory finally came to a conclusion at the age of 39 after coming out of retirement. He says it is likely that he has competed in his last race now the Tour has finished. It has been an incredible journey and he will have a legion of cycling fans voting for him if he makes the shortlist in December.

* Adam Peaty 0.5 pts each way 20/1 William Hill (3 places, 1/4 odds), Ladbrokes/ Coral 20/1 (3 places 1/5 odds)