DESPITE finishing second in the athletics medal table with 42 medals – 16 of which were gold – the strengths of the US team showed little overlap with the predicted areas of Russian superiority.
Only one US medal was affected when factoring in Russian world rankings, and none if taking into account Russia’s 2015 World Championship total.
The distribution tends to shows Russia performs well in classifications of athletes with cerebral palsy whereas the US team fares prominently in wheelchair racing, with athletes such as Tatyana McFadden dominating.