Grand Slam Tennis kicks off year of sport
The new sporting year got off to a relatively slow start in January, with only the Australian Tennis Open, won by the USA ahead of Italy and Spain, featured in GSN statistics.
Yet, even a non-Olympic year like 2025 promises plenty of sporting excitement, and GSN will continue to chart the race to find the world’s best sporting nation, tracking the top-8 results from 150-plus tournaments in 60-plus sports.
Once again, the chase behind 2024 Global Cup champions USA, already ahead after January, will be hot, with three of 2024’s top-10 nations (Italy, Germany and Australia) in the January top-10.
As a taster of things to come, below are some of the year’s main point-scoring tournaments tracked by GSN:
The Alpine Skiing World Cup, ending in March
The Athletics World Championships in September
The women’s European Football Championships in July
The women’s and men’s Road Cycling season with Giro, Vuelta, and Tour de France, and the World Championships in September
The Swimming World Championships in August
Grand Slam and Davis Cup Tennis
The women’s and men’s Volleyball World Championships in September.
The sporting year will end in December with the women’s Floorball and Handball World Championships, and will feature tournaments in three newly-tracked sports, Cheerleading, Padel, and Parkour.
Follow GSN also on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) and keep up with the latest in the quest for the world’s best sporting nation!
Greatest Sporting Nation is a ranking of countries based on their performance in top-level international tournaments in sports in which there is genuine global competition. Countries (national teams and/or individual athletes) score Qualifying Points by finishing in the top eight places in Qualifying Events.
These Qualifying Points are then weighted to produce GSN Points, based on a formula that takes into account individual vs team sports, the sport’s participation (number of countries) and the frequency (annual/biennial/quadrennial) of the tournaments.
The Country scoring the most Points in a calendar year wins the Global Cup for that year. The country that scores the most points relative to its population wins the Per Capita Cup. For a more detailed explanation, please refer to the ‘How It Works’ section on the site
