Paris Olympics 2024 Tips: Five dodgy favourites to avoid

• France will struggle to beat Fiji in Rugby Sevens

• Look to Morocco as Spain put out weak squad

• LeBron James and NBA stars are no guarantee of Team USA basketball success

• Jakob Ingebrigtsen will struggle with rough and tumble races

• Netherlands women will regret loss of hockey experience

• Use Betfair's Safer Gambling during the Paris 2024 Olympics

The pre-Opening Ceremony events begin at the Olympics today, with Men's Football and Rugby Sevens on the agenda. Both these events feature questionable favourites, so we thought it worth marking your card with more dodgy market leaders across the Games.

Dodgy favourite 1: France will struggle to beat Fiji in Rugby Sevens

France kick off their campaign on Wednesday with their Pool C match against the United States, and although they won SVNS in May - the unofficial world cup of Rugby Sevens - they are no certainties to win Olympic gold. Fiji have beaten them in four of their last five encounters, and this field is deeper than the home nation would like.

Dodgy favourite 2: Spain will struggle to follow-up on Euro glory

It would seem obvious to weigh-in on the undoubted kings of European football to add Olympic gold to their Euros trophy, but the reality is that Spain have only once taken the competition seriously, when they won in Barcelona in 1992.

This time around their oldest player is 24, and only two players in their squad have ever won a proper national cap. A team like Morocco, who went close at the 2022 World Cup, is the better bet.

Dodgy favourite 3: Team USA Men should not be odds-on in Basketball

Team USA might have brought LeBron James and a plethora of other NBA talent, but odds-on punters should be cautious. The team have been shaky in pre-Olympics exhibition matches against Australia and Germany, and it's worth remembering that at the last Olympics they lost to France in the group stages and only scraped a win in the final.

Dodgy favourite 4: Don't follow the wave (light) of support for Ingebrigtsen

Don't misunderstand me. Jakob Ingebrigtsen is a fine athlete. He seems like a nice guy, too. And I'm sorry about his family woes. I'm a fully signed-up, bone fide Jakob fan. I even watched all five seasons of the fly-on-the-wall documentary Team Ingebrigtsen.

But for all his brilliance, his best performances have all come with pacemakers, and with those maddening mechanical purveyors of time blinking their way round the inside of Diamond League tracks, the should-be-banned wave lights.

I could break a world record if an LED task-master metronomically paced me round every step (provided I possessed more athletic talent), but this is a very different test to the elbows-out, rough-and-tumble, uneven pace of a championship race, where Jakob will always be vulnerable.

Dodgy favourite 5: Oppose the orange in Women's hockey

It seems contrary in the extreme to suggest Netherlands will not win another Women's Hockey gold. Afterall, they have medalled in nine of the last 10 Olympics, and have continued to steamroller any opposition in internationals over the last two seasons.

Here's the doubt, though: they are at a moment of transition. Team boss, Paul van Ass, has culled several stalwarts of the Dutch outfit in the last few months, deeming them over-the-hill and not worthy of a team berth ahead of younger, better players. You never win anything with kids, however, as some football chappy once said, and I wouldn't mind betting that the Netherlands crumble at some crucial moment in their Olympic campaign, regretting the absence of experienced players who could have steadied the ship.

Now read more Paris 2024 Olympics tips and previews here