Norway Triumphs in Snow & Ice Sports Ranking

Norway won in some style, setting a GSN record for number of points, share of points and margin over the second-placed nation (last year’s winners, the USA). Above all, it’s the Scandinavian country’s first-ever Snow and Ice Sports win, their best previous results being runners-up in 2013 and 2017.

 

As a sport group within the 80-plus sports regularly tracked by GSN, Snow & Ice Sports (or Winter Sports) is one of the major point-earners and, though concentrated mostly in the winter months, with the final showdown at the Ice Hockey World Championships in May (which was won this year by Sweden, ahead of Switzerland), the group includes a  wide range of sports: from Cross Country to Alpine and Freestyle Skiing, to Biathlon, Ski Jumping, Nordic Combined, Snowboarding, Ski Mountaineering and the ice-rink sports of Speedskating, Ice Hockey, Bandy, Curling and Short Track.

 

Norway scored points in 11 of these sports in 2018, all except for Short Track and Ski Mountaineering, something that goes a long way towards explaining their overall triumph. They also won the men’s Snow & Ice ranking, ahead of Germany, and finished second behind the USA in the ladies’, further evidence of their versatility.

 

The final Snow & Ice sports ranking for 2018 is set out below. Among the performances to note, best-ever finishes by Switzerland (5^th) and Italy (9^th), and Russia’s exit from the top 10 for the first time ever … replaced by the Olympic Athletes of Russia (OAR), who earned themselves a 10^th place on the strength of their Winter Olympics performance alone. Even combining their results with those of Russia, the latter would have finished 5^th, further evidence, after the 6^th place of 2017, of the damage wreaked by the country’s state-sponsored doping.

 

To end on a brighter note, well done Israel and Turkey for scoring points in Snow & Ice Sports for the first time in GSN history, in Figure Skating and Curling respectively.