USA wins Paris Olympics ahead of France, China

The result wasn’t surprising, coming after wins at the Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, London and Beijing summer Games, and given the USA topped the official medal table too (see for example here). But because GSN takes a more in-depth approach to each tournament it covers, tracking the first eight places in each event’s final table and not simply the classic gold-silver-bronze medal trio, and also weighting the results based on each single sport’s popularity (please see below and in the How It Works section), ow It Works section)there were interesting differences between the final GSN table and the official medal table.

 

Below we compare the full GSN ranking of the games with the official medal table’s top-20, and we comment on some of the stand-out features.

 

Please note that, at the time of publication, the Paris Olympics results weren’t yet reflected on the tables on the GSN website.

 

 

The medal table shows the USA ‘narrowly’ topping the ranking, with 40 golds like China, and more silvers and bronzes. If we broaden the scope to each event’s top-8 standing, the scale of the USA’s victory is more apparent: the Stars & Stripes scored 1,444 more points and recorded 76 more ‘counts’ (a placement among the top 8 in any of the Games’ events) than second-placed France. The latter’s performance in terms of strength-in-depth is also emphasised by the GSN table, in which the Paris hosts ranked second with a significant point gap over China, and not fifth as in the medal table.

 

Some of the differences between the tables are explained by the weighting GSN assigns to each of the sports it tracks, to account, among other things, for the sport’s global popularity and diffusion.

For example, by winning gold in the women’s Volleyball tournament, Italy racked up one medal in the official table, but 150 GSN points. By contrast, individual women’s gold in a less globally popular sport (yet) like newcomer Breaking, earned Japan one medal and ‘only’ 30 points.

 

Another consequence of GSN’s more in-depth results coverage compared to the classic medal table is that the achievements of many nations usually regarded as less successful on the international sports scene can be identified and celebrated. The full GSN ranking for the Games included 120 countries, as opposed to 84 in the official medal table. Among them, Aruba earned 120^th place by scoring 2 points (coming eighth in the men’s RS:X Windsurfer event). Virtually at the opposite end of the population scale from Aruba (1.3 billion vs 110,000 inhabitants), focus on gold-silver-bronze only meant that India was ranked 71^st in the medal table, but finished 28^th in the GSN table, scoring 276 points in sports ranging from Free Wrestling to Javelin Throw and Badminton, among others.

 

Finally, GSN results can be aggregated in a variety of different ways to add further insights on any competition. As an example, below are the top-30 countries in the GSN Paris ranking by gender, and the full ranking (irrespective of gender) for the Olympics’ signature sports, Athletics.

 

 

 

 

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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