Profiling the world’s top sporting nations: China, Great Britain

Striker Harry Kane played a big part in England’s 2018 FIFA World Cup run – pict.: Getty Images

While competitive sport is still on hold pretty much everywhere, we continue to zoom in on the world’s top sporting nations. Those that occupy the first 20 positions in the 2016-19 quadrennial Global Cup table, first analysed in this article published last December.

In the sixth article in the series, we focus on two of the world’s top-five sporting nations in the last quadrennium: China and Great Britain. In previous articles, we analysed the performance of Serbia, Poland, Kenya, Switzerland, Sweden, South Korea, Brazil, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan and Germany. We took an in-depth look at each country, highlighting which sports it excels at and how versatile it is in terms of disciplines.
 
The table below shows the aggregate top-20 Global Cup ranking for the 2016-19 quadrennial period (or quad for short), the latest for which we have four-year data.
 
China lost two positions in this quad over the previous four-year period, slipping from the podium and slotting into 5th place overall. It finished sixth overall in the Global Cup in three of the quad’s four years (2016, 2017 and 2018), when in the previous quad it never finished below fourth. But China might be on the rise again, having climbed up to third place in the 2019 Global Cup.
 
For an elite sporting nation, China scores GSN points in a relatively limited number of sports: ‘only’ 36 in 2019, one short of the quad’s best result of 37, and as few as 30 in 2018. In comparison, Germany, which sits right behind China in the quad’s aggregate ranking, scored points in 49 sports in 2019, and in never fewer than 40 in three of the quad’s four years.
Shooting, Table Tennis, Weightlifting and Athletics have been among China’s top point contributors in the 2016-19 quad. Shooting was twice the country’s best sport (2018 and 2016), and a sport it won outright every year from 2016 to 2018. Then there is Table Tennis, whose annual Global Cup ranking, overall and for each gender, China has won every year since GSN records began. In three of the quad’s years, China earned 200-plus points from Table Tennis.
 
While not so dominant over the years as in Table Tennis, in the course of the quad China established itself as the world’s Weightlifting powerhouse: it won the sport outright in 2016, 2018 and 2019, and Weightlifting was China’s second-best sport in 2018 and 2019, driving the country’s renewed rise in the world’s elite ranking.
 
The other sport that has been powering up China’s recent spurt is Athletics. It was the country’s top sport in 2019, when China finished fourth in the Athletics World Championships, its best-ever result, led by its ladies, who took the country to second place in the event’s gender ranking.
Finally, China is dominant in two other sports, Diving and Trampoline: it has always won the annual Diving ranking since 2013, and done the same in three out of the 2016-19 quad’s years for Trampoline, though points-wise these are two relatively lean sports.
China is currently 17th in the Global Cup, but, as noted above, it finished 3rd in the Global Cup in 2019, a three-position jump from the previous year.
 
Unlike China, Great Britain was one of the main improvers in the 2016-19 quad, gaining two positions over the previous quad to finish in fourth place, albeit at some distance - 1,839 points - from third-placed Russia.
 
Great Britain is a country with strength in depth, having scored points in 40-plus sports twice in the quad – the maximum being 42 in 2016. It is regularly a multiple winner in GSN’s annual sport rankings: it won only two sports, Cricket and Snooker, in 2019, but as many as five in 2018, including Triathlon and Mountain Bike, and a remarkable seven in 2016, among them Rowing, Sailing and Tennis.
 
More specifically, Great Britain has powered its climb up the aggregate ranking by constant improvement in the course of the quad in Ball Team sports. This is GSN’s top sport group in terms of number of points awarded: it was worth 47,584 points in the quad, an 18.8 % share of the total. The 1,684 points scored by Team GB in this group accounted for 22.2% of the country’s quad total, highlighting the importance of Ball Team sports to Great Britain’s sporting success.
 
The Ball Team sports group aggregates 18 disciplines, from Football, Basketball and Volleyball, to Hockey, Beach Volleyball, Beach Soccer and others, and Team GB has steadily climbed the group’s annual aggregate ranking: it finished 11th in 2016, fifth in 2017, fourth in 2018 and second in 2019. In 2018, Football was the country’s top sport, thanks to England’s run in the men’s FIFA World Cup, and in 2019, Rugby Union and Football (the latter thanks to the England ladies reaching the semi-final at the FIFA World Cup) accounted for nearly a quarter of the country’s total points.
 
However, Athletics has been the single most important sport in driving Great Britain’s steady rise up the elite nations’ ranking in the quad. It was the country’s top point-earning sport in 2016, 2017 and 2019, and in 2017 Team GB was third overall in the sport’s annual ranking (behind the USA and Kenya), one of its best results since GSN records began.
Finally, Swimming has also been a strong contributor to Great Britain’s Global Cup performances, having been its third-best sport in 2016 and 2017, and fourth in 2019.
 
Great Britain finished fourth in the Global Cup in 2019, and it currently sits in 14th place in the 2020 Global Cup.
 
GLOBAL CUP QUADRENNIAL RANKING 2016-19
TOP 20
 
2016-2019
pts
%
pos. change*
1
United States
25,624
10.12
0
2
France
13,275
5.24
+3
3
Russia
13,267
5.24
-1
4
Great Britain
11,428
4.51
+2
5
China
11,104
4.39
-2
6
Germany
10,922
4.31
-2
7
Japan
9,854
3.89
+2
8
Italy
8,772
3.47
+2
9
Canada
7,924
3.13
-1
10
Australia
7,486
2.96
-3
11
Netherlands
7,414
2.93
+3
12
Spain
6,268
2.48
+1
13
Norway
6,043
2.39
+4
14
Brazil
5,779
2.28
-2
15
South Korea
5,664
2.24
-4
16
Sweden
5,375
2.12
0
17
Switzerland
4,952
1.96
+1
18
Kenya
4,452
1.76
-3
19
Poland
3,659
1.45
0
20
Serbia
3,627
1.43
+2
 
* 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.