Sporting grannie almost won National (9)
I believe the answer is:
norwegian
'national' is the definition.
(I know that Norwegian is a type of national)
'sporting grannie almost won' is the wordplay.
'sporting' is an anagram indicator.
'almost' means to remove the last letter (most of the word but not all of it).
'won' with its last letter taken away is 'wo'.
'grannie'+'wo'='granniewo'
'granniewo' is an anagram of 'NORWEGIAN'.
(Other definitions for norwegian that I've seen before include "Nationality of citizen of Oslo" , "Northerner" , "1 in 21 [OSLO] possibly" , "Foreigner" , "From Oslo, perhaps" .)