Profiling the world’s top sporting nations: Serbia, Poland, Kenya

As a starting point, we look at the quadrennial Global Cup rankings, first analysed in this article published last December. Quadrennial periods (which we will call for brevity ‘quads’) provide a panoramic view of the world of sport, since many major international tournaments, the Olympic Games above all, are held every four years.

 

The table below shows the aggregate top-20 Global Cup ranking for the 2016-19 quad, the latest for which we have four-year data. In this and future articles, we will analyse the sporting profile of these top-20 nations, starting from the bottom three: Serbia, Poland and Kenya.

 

A quick look at Serbia’s country page shows the country’s Global Cup success relies chiefly on Volleyball and Basketball. In the four years in question, one of these sports has always been Serbia’s top sport, with never less than 32% of the total points scored. Tennis – i.e. Novak Djokovic - is another big sport for Serbia, with up to 26.2% of its total (in 2019).

In the quad, Serbia scored points in 16 different sports.

Aside from the three mentioned above, Combat sports (specifically Judo, Karate, Taekwondo and Wrestling) are an area in which Serbia regularly performs successfully, helping the country gain two positions in 2016-19 over the previous quad (2011-15) and sneak into the top 20 table. Confirmation of the country’s position in the world sporting elite come also from its Per Capita Cup performance: sixth in 2016 and fifth in 2018.

Serbia finished 30^th in the 2019 Global Cup, and is currently 24^th in the 2020 Global Cup.

 

In the 2016-19 quad, Poland scored a mere 32 points more than Serbia, keeping the 19^th place it clinched in the previous quad’s ranking. With a population of 38,432,000, 5.4 times that of Serbia, the country scores points over a much wider range of sports, the most in the quad being 27 in 2019. Among sports as diverse as Climbing, Floorball and Diving, nearly 30% of Poland’s 2019 points came from Athletics, the country finishing a creditable eighth in the Athletics World Championships, the same as in 2017 and a two-position improvement over 2015.

The other leading sport for Poland is Volleyball, especially in the last two years: it finished fifth in 2018 and fourth in 2019, when it came third in the men’s World League and fifth in the women’s Grand Prix.

Poland finished 23^rd in the 2019 Global Cup and is currently 21^st in the 2020 Global Cup.

 

Kenya ranked 18^th in the 2016-19 quad, losing three positions compared to the previous quad. Despite being bigger in every sense than Poland and Serbia, with a population just shy of 50 million, Kenya is very specialised sportswise, scoring never less than 94% of its annual Global Cup points in Athletics (Track and Field) and Marathon. The notable exceptions were Rugby Union in 2018 (it finished eighth in the Rugby Sevens World Series) and 2016, and Boxing in 2016 (it came 26^th in the Amateur Boxing World Championship).

The Athletics World Championships are Kenya’s most productive tournament: it came third in 2019 and second behind the USA in 2017, in both cases ahead of major sporting countries like China, Great Britain, France and Germany.

Kenya finished 17^th in the 2019 Global Cup and is currently 35^th in the 2020 Global Cup.

 

* position change vs previous quad

 

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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.