World Ranking of Countries in Elite Sport sees India climb to No. 16 in 2024

India has risen to the 16th spot in the 2024 World Ranking of Countries in Elite Sport (WRCES), its highest since the scientific sport rankings were first devised for the International Centre for Sport Policy & Governance (ICSPG) in 2014. India’s previous best rank of 19th was obtained a year earlier.

The WRCES takes into account performances of athletes across 115 disciplines and includes all 206 nations that have National Olympic Committees. The ranking system rewards countries that succeed in highly popular and universal sports that do not offer many medals in the Olympic Games.

The 2024 WRCES list, published earlier this week, has Japan (fifth), China (sixth) and South Korea (11th) as the Asian countries ahead of India. The United States of America is entrenched at the top – as it has been in annual WRCES edition – with France, Great Britain and Italy following it this time. 

Notre Dame University-Louaize Associate Professor in Physical Education and Sports Nadim Nassif, who devised the WRCES, said this system is based on computational model that attributes to each country its share of points in at least one sport and its world ranking on the basis of points in all sport besides taking universality and popularity coefficients for each sport.

“The system takes into account ranking lists published by the International Federations and is inspired by the fact that Olympic Medal Table does not consider the universality and popularity of each sport besides not reflecting successes in competitions such as Tennis Grand Slams, Formula 1 and the Football, Cricket and Rugby Union World Cups,” he said. 

“It’s really not logical to draw conclusions from that,” Nadim Nassif said, referring to the Olympic Medal Table. “Some sports, which are played less than others, offer 10 gold medals while sport like Basketball, Volleyball and Field Hockey have only two medals on offer in each Olympic Games. Besides, the Olympic medal Table takes into account only podium finishes.” 

Indeed, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games medal table lists Pakistan at 62, thanks to Arshad Nadeem’s Javelin Throw gold medal, and India, with six medals, at 71. But when looking at the larger picture, WRCES gives a clearer vision of the state of sports in the two countries. Pakistan is ranked 89, 73 rungs below India.

Until last year, the Olympic Charter declared that the International Olympic Committee shall not draw up any global ranking. However, since July 23 last, it says “representations featuring competition results may be drawn up by the IOC and, with the authorisation of the IOC, by the Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, for informational purposes.”

Nadim Nassif said that the WRCES takes into account the fact that India is a top cricketing nation. “We take the ICC ranking and we weigh it, because Cricket is a big sport. This is where you will see the real value of India,” he said, pointing out that the Olympic Medal Table does not yet consider Cricket. 

“Even when it is included in the Olympics, India will still be unfairly ranked because there are only two medals at stake. And, if for some reason, the teams have bad semifinals and lose the third place matches in the Olympics, India will not have anything from Cricket,” he said. Of course, WRCES respects Olympic Games performances but brings a more holistic perspective.

For the record, in 2014, the inaugural year of WRCES, India was ranked 43rd. That placed in only seventh in the continent. In the time since then, India has leapfrogged past Kazakhstan, Thailand and Iran. The inclusion of more sport in the WRCES system has obviously helped India rise in the rankings.

It is also critical to note that the WRCES Merit Ranking, which rewards countries punching above their weight and includes factors like population and GDP etc., has India listed at  149. The top six nations on WRCES do not fare any better on the WRCES Merit Ranking – United States of America is 105, France 86, Great Britain 93, Italy 89, Japan 111 and China 122.