Norway Triumphs in Snow & Ice Sports Ranking

Robert Johansson in full flight, helping Norway take gold in the Ski Jumping team event at the PyeongChang Olympics

It was pretty much a foregone conclusion, after Norway’s historic victory at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, and their continued domination of winter sports in the month of March, but now it’s official: Norway are the best nation in Snow and Ice Sports in 2018!

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 (5th) and Italy (9th), 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 10th place on the strength of their Winter Olympics performance alone. Even combining their results with those of Russia, the latter would have finished 5th, further evidence, after the 6th 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.
 
2018
SNOW & ICE SPORTS
Place
Country
Points
Points %
1
Norway
1,251
12.2%
2
United States
959
9.4%
3
Canada
817
8.0%
4
Germany
752
7.3%
5
Switzerland
737
7.2%
6
Sweden
721
7.0%
7
France
556
5.4%
8
Austria
506
4.9%
9
Italy
481
4.7%
10
OAR
435
4.2%
11
Japan
388
3.8%
12
Finland
376
3.7%
13
South Korea
363
3.5%
14
Russia
304
3.0%
15
Netherlands
285
2.8%
16
China
244
2.4%
17
Czech Republic
214
2.1%
18
Slovakia
126
1.2%
19
Belarus
112
1.1%
20
Great Britain
83
0.8%
21
Kazakhstan
70
0.7%
22
Poland
66
0.6%
23
Hungary
65
0.6%
24
Australia
64
0.6%
25
Liechtenstein
60
0.6%
26
Slovenia
58
0.6%
27
Latvia
52
0.5%
28
New Zealand
31
0.3%
29
Spain
23
0.2%
30
Ukraine
17
0.2%
31
Israel
11
0.1%
32
Belgium
11
0.1%
33
Bulgaria
8
0.1%
34
Chile
6
0.1%
35
Serbia
2
0.0%
36
Romania
2
0.0%
37
Turkey
1
0.0%
 
Grand Total
10,256
100.0%