Elite Sport Ranking of the "International Society of Sports Sciences in the Arab World": An Accurate Evaluation of all Nations’ Performances in International Sports Competitions

The International Society of Sports Sciences in the Arab World (I3SAW) has published (AIPS 2015) an annual elite sport ranking for 2014 by collecting the results across 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) for 35 sports, which are part of the Summer and Winter Olympic programs. This ranking of countries was based on a new methodology that computes points for the results obtained by countries in each sport. These points were then multiplied by welldefined coefficients attributed to each sport based on its level of universality and popularity, with the country's final score resulting from the addition of points in each of the 35 Olympic sports. Unlike the Olympic medal table, the I3SAW System allows the ranking of each country having a National Olympic Committee. This system also rewards countries that have achieved consistent results, and presented a larger number of athletes who have succeed in several disciplines, in addition to the sports involving a higher level of competition. The main objective of this paper is to present this new methodology and model, which led to a new international sport ranking in 2014. The study also covers the year 2015 by adding 17 non-Olympic sports chosen for their sum-value of universality and popularity coefficients, which are equal or equivalent to one of the Olympic sport. This annual ranking would, therefore, reward countries that are most efficient in establishing elite sport policies. As such, this paper aims at providing a measure for the countries? performance, which the various national sport authorities, media, and scholars could better utilize in the field of sports sciences.