USA back in Global Cup top spot

The USA duly won April’s monthly ranking, scoring serious points in Golf and Marathon, and now have a slim 94-point lead over the plucky Scandinavians. The USA have scored almost exactly the same number of points as in the first four months of 2017, but they now have a 10.4% share of the total as opposed to 9.5% last year.

 

Norway still retain a significant margin (271 points) over third-placed Germany – and they are still the world’s sportiest nation, having a huge lead in the Per Capita Cup - though interestingly the rest of the top-10 countries are much closer to each other in point terms than last year, when France was third with 1059 points and Sweden was tenth with 509.

 

As shown by the top-20 table below, with the position variation versus the year-to-date ranking in April 2017, France have lost four positions to the expense of Germany, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden (the latter are one of the big movers this year, up four places). Undoubtedly, the Winter Olympics last February played a part in this reversal, since all of those four countries finished above France in the PyeongChang ranking.

 

The other main negative performance in the first four months of 2018 is that of Russia. The country was heavily hit with athletes’ bans by the IOC following the state-doping scandal which unfolded last autumn and earlier this year.

 

Russia the country lost six places compared to April 2017. Adding Russia’s current points to those won by the Olympic Athletes of Russia (OAR) in PyeongChang would put the Russia-OAR ‘conglomerate’ currently in fifth position overall in the Global Cup. To put this in context however, in April 2014, with the Sochi Winter Olympics under their belt, Russia was second overall in the Global Cup, 231 points behind the USA.

 

There are still two thirds of the sporting year to play for, and a 1000-point-worth Football World Cup too, so the race for positions behind the USA will be red hot for the rest of the year – and you can follow it on GSN!

 

 GLOBAL CUP Y-T-D APRIL 2018                      position vs 2017