Overview

The RubaiSport World Rankings combines the official world rankings from more than 40 different sports to create a single world ranking of nations to give an accurate picture of which countries are the best overall in sport.

Nations are given points based on their standings in each sport’s world rankings.The points for each country are multiplied by a weight based on the global participation in the sport.Points accrued by a nation across all sports are combined to give its overall points score.The country with the most points is ranked number one.

Sports

There are many sports contested around the world, however, our aim is to only include those sports which have a genuinely high level of international competition. The following rules have been applied when deciding which sports to include:

• It requires physical exertion to participate
• It must have official published world rankings publicly available, and it must have at least ten different nations represented in the rankings
• It must not require a motor engine, be of a fighting nature or require animals

If a sport is on the Olympic programme, but does not meet all of the above requirements it may still be considered for the rankings. Sports such as American Football and Australian Rules Football which are predominantly centred around one country, while still having international competitions, will not be included.

Rankings Data

If an overall nation's ranking list is produced by a sport’s international governing body, then this is used as the sole source of ranking data for the sport. This eliminates the need to track any competitions and also leaves out the guesswork needed when trying to classify/weight competitions in sports which we do not follow. The competition weights and recency are usually already factored into the governing body’s rankings and are determined by those close to the sport.

If an overall nation's ranking list is not available, but rankings lists are available for the individual event level or overall athlete level (e.g. world rankings for the men’s 100m event in athletics), then this is used instead. In this case, points from each event within a single sport are combined with equal weighting to produce the points list for that sport. In a few select sports where there is a clear competitiveness gap between events, a weighting is applied based on the proportion of ranked athletes. Examples include nordic combined and ski jumping.

If no ranking lists are available, then the sport is not currently included in the rankings. Once the sport completes at least 2 post-covid world championship cycles, the results from these competitions will be used to produce a ranking for the sport.

When combining rankings from all of the sports to create a final ranking, the sports are given a weight based on their global participation and audience. These weights are based on the tier system used by the IOC to classify sports in the Olympic programme.

Nations

Where possible, athletes and teams are attributed to one of the countries recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Self-governing and/or dependent territories of New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States, China, Denmark, France and Netherlands are considered as separate entities by many sports governing bodies (but not necessarily by the IOC). Due to their extensive participation history in these sports, these territories are included as separate nations for the basis of these rankings.

The constituent nations of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) have a history of competing separately in some sports. In individual sports, all athletes from these nations are attributed to the United Kingdom. While in team sports, the top team from this group is attributed to the United Kingdom with the rest being removed without replacement.

In some sports the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland combine to form an Ireland team. In this case the team is attributed to the Republic of Ireland.

The points accumulated by the West Indies cricket team are distributed among its constituent nations based on the proportion of athletes drafted into the most recent Caribbean Premier League.

Where data exists, neutral athletes from Russia are attributed to Russia. Athletes designated as refugees are not included.