The United States Is The Greatest Sporting Nation In The World

What country is the most successful sporting nation in the world? While some have tried to pretend that this is a serious debate, upon taking a serious look at the facts, it becomes clear. The United States is the greatest sporting nation in the world. And it is not particularly close.

Take the Summer Olympics, the closest thing to an overall world sports competition that we have. Yes, multiple sports, like soccer, tennis, rugby, golf etc do not have their highest competition in the Olympics. But the majority of sports do. All one really has to do is take the results of the Olympics and add them to the results of the highest competitions in the sports that do not have their pinnacle at the Olympics.

The US, by leaps and bounds, is the most successful nation in the Olympics. And it is not remotely close. Please do not try to bring up per capita as an argument against this. First of all, nations are restricted in the amount of athletes that they can bring to the Olympics. This results in nations with 10 times less people than the US often having 60% of the athletes the US has.

But why does that matter? Surely having the best of your country is all that is needed to optimize the amount of medals you win. Not exactly. Look at it this way; in many sports, there are nationality restrictions in how many athletes of any single nation can be entered into the final rounds.

If a nation had say 7 of the top 15 runners in a track and field event, but could only enter 2, it would most definitely lower the amount of medals, and likelihood of a gold medal, that such a nation would win. You often have athletes from the US who, on their best day, could win the gold medal at the Olympics, but on a poor day, miss out on the US spot to even go to the Olympics.

This actually happened to American speed skater Erin Jackson. Jackson failed to qualify from the US trials for the 500 meter skating event. Brittany Bowe won the US trials to qualify, but gave her spot up to Jackson, who went on to win Olympic gold in the event.

You have many scenarios of Americans who narrowly miss out on qualifying from the extremely competitive US pool for a restricted number of spots, who could win gold in their event. If there were no athlete restrictions, and qualification was solely on merit, the amount of medals the US would win would be extrapolated.

The fact that Canada has almost 80% of the athletes in the Summer Olympics that the US has is indicative. Imagine if the 50 US states all competed as separate nations. California would likely alone have 90% of the amount of athletes that the US has overall. When you add in all 50 states, you’d likely have over 20 times the amount of athletes competing, and quite possibly over 10 times as many medalists, as if they were one country.

Additionally, there is a law of diminishing returns for big nations in the per capita sense. If a country like New Zealand wins 1 gold medal, a nation like China would have to win more gold medals than there are events in the Olympics, just to keep up per capita.

Finally, it only seems like things that the US does well in, or overall sports, where we add per capita as an argument for who is actually better. In soccer, Uruguay and the Netherlands are probably the best “per capita” soccer nations, but Brazil and Germany actually win the most, and are called the best soccer nations.

Ok, you’ve made your point on the Olympics. But they don’t show the best in sports, they’re mostly amateurs. And besides, most sports don’t have their highest competition in the Olympics. Well, that’s not exactly true. From basketball to track and field to swimming, wrestling, gymnastics, and much more, the highest competition of those sports is the Olympics.

If you’re not convinced, here is a list of the sports that the US is all time the best at: baseball, basketball, track and field, swimming, lacrosse, beach volleyball, figure skating, tennis, golf, boxing, diving, shooting, rowing, snowboarding.

Here is a list of sports that the US is all time in the top 5 in: ice hockey, wrestling, gymnastics, volleyball, speed skating, alpine skiing, bobsleigh, equestrian, sailing, cycling, weightlifting, archery.

This doesn’t even include American football. Of course it doesn’t; few countries play the sport. But I mention it, because American football takes a good portion of the top American athletes. The US is the best or top 5 in all of these sports, even without the large amount of American athletes that do not play these sports.

Tennis? What about Federer, Djokovic, Nadal, and the fact that it has been 20 years since an American man won a Grand Slam singles title? Well yes, right now the US is not the best in tennis, at least on the men’s side. But it has by far the most amount of individual Grand Slam winners, in amount, and in different individual winners, of any country. This is true on both the men’s and women’s side.

Even if one wanted to go into team competition, which matters less, the US has the most Davis Cups (the male world team tennis championship) and Fed Cups (the female world team tennis championship) of any nation in history. Like Brazil in soccer, the US is not the best in tennis right now, but most certainly is the most successful tennis nation of all time.

No nation in the world is remotely close to the US in how many different sports it is all time the best or top 5 in. And please, don’t try to say that the sports listed that the US is the best or top 5 in are sports the US cares about more than the rest of the world. Besides baseball and basketball, none of the aforementioned sports are huge in the US. And neither baseball nor basketball themselves are the biggest sports in the US.

In fact, nearly every sport that the US is the best or top 5 in are sports that certain other countries care more about than the US. The only sports the US is not amongst the best are sports that are many orders of magnitude less popular in the US than in other countries.

Soccer has only just become the 4th most popular sport in the US, and until the last 15 years was not even a top 5 sport in the US, while it has been the top sport in most of the world for over 100 years. Rugby, cricket, handball and field hockey are almost nonexistent in the US.

The only regrettable thing is that there are many widely played sports in the world that the US simply has never taken that seriously. This fact has prevented the US from being among the best in those sports, and has allowed certain people to make the claims about the US not being the best.

Some claim that the US is only the best in sports that no other nations play. That is clearly not the case. It really is that the only thing that really keeps the US from being the best or among the best in a sport is the US’ lack of interest.

Anyone who assesses in good faith can see that the US is the most successful sporting nation in the world by quite a distance. Does the US dominate everything? No way. Can other nations beat the US, even in sports popular in the US? Of course.

The US is not unbeatable in sports, and in some, like soccer, actually needs to learn from other nations in how to produce high quality players. But on the whole, the United States is by far the most successful sporting nation in the world, and will be for the foreseeable future.