Norway’s Domination of World Sport Continues

The amazing Norwegians, no other way to define a country of just over 5 million inhabitants which is keeping at bay the mighty USA – second both in the monthly and the year-to-date ranking – put their Winter Sports prowess to good use in March.

Winter Sports accounted for the lion’s share of the month’s GSN points (3432 out of 5080 points on offer, March being one of the biggest months of the sporting year), and Norway took full advantage, winning the Cross-Country Skiing World Cup, coming third behind Austria and Switzerland in the Alpine Skiing World Cup, and picking up 494 points altogether, for a 2%-point-share advantage over the USA.

 

Germany came third in the month, just ahead of the Netherlands, winners of the Track Cycling World Championships on home soil, and the rest of the top ten featured Italy, Switzerland, Russia, France, Canada and Austria (you can view the top-20 monthly ranking below).

 

Nine of these top-ten countries are also featured in the year-to-date top ten, the exception being Sweden in 8^th place, while Russia are out of it. They lie in 14^th place, preceded in 12^th by the Olympic Athletes of Russia (OAR), the ‘non-country’ that took Russia’s place at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in February – the two combined would be in fourth place overall in the Global Cup, with 783 points.

 

Could the Global Cup title race in 2018 be a three-legged one between the three current leaders, Norway, the USA and Germany? It’s hard to see Norway hold on to their top spot after April, but Germany are looking very strong this year. And it is a Football World Cup year too, where reigning champions Germany could pick up a large bounty indeed.

In 2014, when Germany bagged 1,000 points in July for winning the Football World Cup, they had a 5.6% share (659 points) after March. They currently have an 8.1% share (980 points). Adding to this total the same number of points they scored in 2014 after March, they’d be good for 3617 points at the year’s end, which in 2014 would have given them second place overall.

So, while Norway is currently dominant, Germany is staking a claim for a best-ever second-place finish in the 2018 Global Cup, though last year’s runners-up, France, will not give up that prize spot so easily.