Best Sporting Nation?

Remove all ads!

Australia for me.
They're best at cricket. Best at rugby league. Very good at rugby union. Decent enough team at football, without it being one of their main sports. They're also highly dominate in Aussie rules and swimming.
They do very well at the Olympics and have steady teams in others sports. A few decent tennis players.

All with about 1/3 of our population. They've got such a winning mentality and 2nd place just isn't an option. Plus they play fair .

 

HAHA, we have that in writing from a Pommy. If only I could get a signiture with that. For me, I think it is probably the U.S as the are heavy competition for us at the Olympics and most other sports that we do well in but they can also be very competitive against countries like China who specialise in gymnastics and Africa who specialise in long distance whereas we get creamed in those events with only an occasional medal (like the guy who got a silver for trampolining a few years back and the guy who won gold at the winter Olypics in speed skating when all of the other competitors stacked it on the last corner).

 

Aye, but the US has about 300 million population to Aussies, what, 20 million?

France also compete well all round, but don't ever let it get out that I said that .

England should do better, there's no disguising that. Other than our boxers, who are usually pretty good, we're a nation of sporting chokers.

 

I think Sweden do pretty well for our 9 million people. In general means high standard of living = good at sports as people have the time and means to actually sport.

 

I'm not sure if the living standard is actually that much related. Usually richer nations do it a lot better in sports that require expensive equipment such as motorsports, ice hockey to mention a few, while the poor African countries seem to be doing quite well in long distance running. It's more a question of media coverage and culture I think. We traditionally play sports that get decent media coverage, while in poorer countries they play traditional local sports which are not as often recognized on the international level.

If we however look at nations on the basis of media coverage then US is probably first which is also affected by their large population. If we take the population into consideration I'd say that Norway is doing very well, considering the small population.

 

It shames me to say this as a New Zealander but I agree with Barmy... Australia just simply wins far more often than most would imagine a country with their population to be able to manage.

Even after watching them in the Soccer World Cup one would simply have to be surprised to see a PACIFIC team do so well against all those South American and European warhorses.

The United States would list near the bottom on my sporting radar. They simply don't play enough international sports and those sports they do play... well they suck at them Baseball, American Football, Ice Hockey seem to be the big 3 sports they play however they pretty much only play those sports against Canada or inter-state competitions.

 

Haha, thats another. Good on ya Abomination. This just keeps getting better...

Forgot to say this before but our cricket team was "once" the best when it had Steve Waugh as captain and Andy Bichel in the side. Still, it will be interesting to watch the Ashes this year.

 

I don't think it's possible to define this overall. I think it almost has to be sport by sport. Look at the 2006 Olympics. The top 5 medal winners, in order were Germany, U.S., Canada, Austria and Russia. Australia finished 18th. But they did have an impressive showing in the Summer Olympics. Results from Athens in 2004 (again in order of number of medals): U.S., China, Russia, Australia, Japan.

So I'm inclined to go with the U.S. and Russia as the best in the world. They consistently finish well in most types of international sporting events.