Greatest Sporting Nation

[clifferdSH]

Okay, so I was just wondering what are your thoughts on the greatest sporting nation at this time.

Australia - Rugby Union (Won RWC's), Cricket (pretty obvious), Motorsports, Rugby League, Swimming, Surfing, a decent soccer team, success at Olympics, Tennis, Bike Riding (Cadel Evans winning Tour De France) + many more.

And then there is, for obvious reasons..

U.S
China
Russia
Germany
France
Great Britain
Canada
Japan
Spain
Italy
Brazil

Who do you think? please explain your answer :smiley: (Notable achievements, etc.)

 

[Yossarian]

I think that's virtually impossible to say because different countries focus on different sports. You could argue the US is actually doing fairly poorly at the moment outside the Olympics. Their tennis players aren't winning as much as they used to, esp. the men, the leading golfer is not American, even their basketball and baseball teams have struggled to win (I realise some of them weren't the strongest teams they could field but still). Apart from US football, how many major team events could you reliably expect them to win? Compare that to NZ who won a RU World Cup (the 2nd biggest team sporting event if you exclude the Olympics), were just as competitive at the soccer WC, and have a much better cricket team!

I'd prefer to judge nations's performance based on their population and wealth. The US are bound to do pretty well at a lot of events because they have money to pay for good facilities and coaches and a big population pool to choose from. Ditto China. On that basis you could say countries like Serbia, Spain, and good old Australia are doing pretty well in punching above their weight. Aust has produced Grand Slam tennis champions and of course Cadel Evans and a golfer with placings in multiple majors. They've qualified for nearly every major team event and are competitive in every sport that enjoys a degree of interest here.

 

[happy_tiger]

Very hard to measure but as Yoss said if you can convert gold medals per head of capita I think we have won every Olympics since 1992

 

[Yossarian]

Assuming you have a minimum Happy. Otherwise there it only takes one guy from a Carribean nation to blow out the stats. Jamaica probably were close to best per capita nation last time because Bolt was unstoppable!

 

[Citizen_Tiger]

Spain are the current WC Football champs, have dominated the Tour de France post Armstrong and have a dominant presence in men's Tennis.

Three truly global sports, no contest really

 

[stryker]

Australia has world champions in many disciplines including off the top of my head:

Moto GP W/C - Stoner,
Tour de France winner - Evans,
Womens netball W/C
Boxing W/C's - Geale, Dib and if you want to include WBA - Mundine,
Mens Hockey W/C

We have W/C's in swimming, athletics, triathalon, sailing, squash, rowing, snowboarding, xtreme sports + many more…..

Point being, our national team sport orientated victories have been on the decline but our lesser promoted sports people are still killing it on the world stage. I think per capita we are in the top 2 or 3 in the world without a doubt.

 

[happy_tiger]

Australia has world champions in many disciplines including off the top of my head:

Moto GP W/C - Stoner,
Tour de France winner - Evans,
Womens netball W/C
Boxing W/C's - Geale, Dib and if you want to include WBA - Mundine,
Mens Hockey W/C

We have W/C's in swimming, athletics, triathalon, sailing, squash, rowing, snowboarding, xtreme sports + many more…..

Point being, our national team sport orientated victories have been on the decline but our lesser promoted sports people are still killing it on the world stage. I think per capita we are in the top 2 or 3 in the world without a doubt.

Is woodchopping classed a sport

 

[underdog]

Very hard to measure but as Yoss said if you can convert gold medals per head of capita I think we have won every Olympics since 1992

http://www.medalspercapita.com/

that was 2008 - Bahamas and Jamaica are no surprises, but we do pack a pretty good punch.

 

[stryker]

Look at countries with a pop of over 20 million….we are 1st by a very long way.

 

[happy_tiger]

Very hard to measure but as Yoss said if you can convert gold medals per head of capita I think we have won every Olympics since 1992

http://www.medalspercapita.com/

that was 2008 - Bahamas and Jamaica are no surprises, but we do pack a pretty good punch.

Thanks Underdog did try and find something but gave up Very Interesting The sheep seducers on the Gold medal count are actually better than us

 

[Demonborger]

Spain in international achievement terms

Australia in terms of variety

USA in terms of professionalism and organisation

UK in terms of originality
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Anglosphere invented and shaped most sports in their modern forms

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

Spain in international achievement terms

Australia in terms of variety

USA in terms of professionalism and organisation

UK in terms of originality
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Anglosphere invented and shaped most sports in their modern forms

This is probably where Australia enjoys so much sporting success. We don't dominate everything at once, but because we seem to have such a wide interest in sports, we go through cycles in most major events. Football was probably the final frontier in world sport which we seem to have become more successful in the last decade.

We've always had naturally talented footballers with international credibility, it was just poor organisation. With the introduction of a proper national football league (despite it's low crowd ratings and it's lack of exposure,) and a coach who actually is willing to promote talent from within that league instead of a Dutch idiot whose philosophy was to ignore the national league, score a goal before the other team and then "park the bus," we are seeing marked improvement in our national side and will probably get close to winning a world cup in the next 20-30 years.

Spain are awesomely athletes and will always be one of the best sporting nations, considering their population, (whilst double ours,) is so much smaller than the likes of the Chinese, Russia, US et al.