USA the world’s best sporting nation in 2019
The USA has won the Global Cup for the 12th consecutive time, topping GSN’s table of the world’s sporting nations at the end of December 2019 by scoring 7,014 points, equivalent to a 10.2% share of the total.
Last year, the USA’s winning margin over runner-up France, though sizeable, was one of the slimmest on record (1,716 points) but, in 2019, Team USA outscored second-placed Russia by an emphatic 2,873 points, one of the biggest margins ever. Russia in turn had a nearly 1,000-point lead over third-placed China, marking a return to the world sporting order as it was last seen in the Global Cup in 2015 – though Great Britain did make a strong year-end surge that brought them within a mere 128 points of the podium.
The USA of course is firmly entrenched at the top of the world sporting order. In 2019, it won both the men’s and the women’s Global Cup rankings – last year France managed an upset by snatching the men’s title – and it excelled in most of GSN’s key indicators:
- First for number of point-scoring sports: a whopping 53 out of the 77 sports tracked by GSN in 2019
- First for number of sport podium finishes: while Russia surprisingly won more sports than the USA (9 versus 8), the latter came second in 11 sports and third in another 5, for a total of 16 podium finishes vs Russia’s 10
- First for number of top-eight finishes across all tournaments/events: 515, Russia was a distant second with 356.
The USA also won two of the year’s biggest sport groups (worth altogether 27.0% of the total points): Aquatics (comprising Swimming, Open Water Swimming, Synchronised Swimming, Diving and Water Polo) ahead of Australia and Russia, and Ball Team Sports (comprising among others Football, Rugby Union and Volleyball ) ahead of Great Britain and the Netherlands.
The USA’s highest scoring sport in 2019 was Athletics, accounting for 26.7% of its points, followed by Swimming and Golf.
Finally, below is the list of the sports won outright by the USA:
Athletics (Track + Field)
Beach Volleyball
Football
Golf
Snowboarding
Surfing
Swimming
Volleyball.
