25 countries for 66 sports

The GSN sporting year awarded a total of 62467 points, across 66 sports (three less than 2016, an Olympic year), including a new entry in our rankings, Beach Soccer.

 

A total of 126 countries scored points in the year, and a big round of applause goes to the 25 countries which won at least one of the year’s individual sport rankings. You’ll find further below the full list of sports and their winners in alphabetical order, from Alpine Skiing to Wrestling, but before that we’ve listed the winning countries in terms of number of sports won: a table which does contain a few surprises.

 

 

The country at the top isn’t a surprise of course: even though they scored points in an incredible 51 different sports in 2017, the USA actually won three fewer sports than last year. However, they clocked up another 11 podium finishes in as many other sports this year. In other words, they finished in the top 3 in 41% of the sports they scored points in.

 

First-time sport winners Taiwan (Ten Pin Bowling) and Thailand (Weightlifting) deserve a special mention of course. As do France, runners-up in the Global Cup (for the second time in succession) through strength in depth, scoring points in 43 sports even though they won only three of them (Handball, Mountain Bike and Open Water Swimming) – but to these they added another 9 podium finishes.

Conversely, multiple sport winners like Germany and China were less effective in the main point-scoring sports, and ended up behind France in the Global Cup’s final standings.

Below is the full list of sport winners in 2017: