Why are some countries so overrepresented the Olympics while others are so underrepresented?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was watching the Olympic ceremonies and it was fascinating to see how many countries are overrepresented if you look at how small their population is compared to some countries that have many times that population and don't really have many Olympic athletes. Like India has 1.4 billion people and not very many athletes who qualified (some of their athletes qualified under "universality place") at 110. Mexico has 107, Poland has 210, the Netherlands 258, Brazil 274, Australia has 460 with a population of just 26 million. So Australia has 1/50 the population of India but sends 4 times as many athletes. Even China only has 388 athletes (1.4 billion) which is similar to the number Spain (population of 47 million) has with 382

The "Universality Places" are for countries that don't send a lot of athletes so they have affirmative action type programs to let some of their athletes compete even if they don't meet qualify time standards or are the best in the world. This then bumps athletes who should have qualified. For example, in track and field any country that does not have an athlete qualified in any event (and each sex is viewed separately) is able to enter their best-ranked athlete in either the 100 meters, 800 meters, or marathon. So for the marathon 9 out of the 80 women are universality placements. The US women are running under 2:25, so a universality admit of 2:30 from Namibia or 2:32 from Zimbabwe makes sense, but why would they let a woman from Bhutan in who runs a 3:26? That isn't even fast enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

Because the point of the Olympics is to bring in as many countries as possible. It wouldn’t be the Olympics if only the US, Australia, Canada and Brazil were competing.

Really? I thought it was for the best of the best to compete.

Not really. Countries are only allowed two swimmers per event even if they have several swimmers who are world class in that event. The US (pop 340m) and China (pop 1.4b) can have only 2 swimmers but so can Ireland (pop 5m) if they meet the qualifying standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's because the Olympics are a corrupt and all about money and the key to a successful Olympic program is huge sums of cash and a willingness and sophistication to use doping.

Soooo... not every country has that?

No, not every country dopes. You are projecting again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most privileged answer ever.
Many of these countries don’t have the facilities or coaching for these high level
Athletes to train, not to mention the credentialed associations.

Aside from that, do you know that athletes must pay their own way, or have adequate sponsorship/ a supporting organization to pay their way?

Also, winning on the world stage only matters if you have the opportunity to gain financially from it. Sports aren’t a feasible financial future for most people, unless they are willing to put it all on the line.

It was amazing watching South Sudan and the US basketball teams. On one side you have the best trained players who make $30 million a year, give or take. On the other side you have players who live in a country in a constant state of civil war causing famine and severe hunger in the majority of citizens.

South Sudan should have won the preliminary game but instead lost by 1 point. That was so unnerving to the Americans that they couldn’t control racist ignorant comments.

“We almost lost to the ahi ahi tribe”.

They get their shoes from America. We gotta ship them shoes. They only have basketball rims, dawg. Manute Bol, I seen he had to walk... what, an hour and a half to go shoot basketball. We lose it to people who don't even... they got baskets in the back. They shooting on f**king peach baskets in the dirt, no shoes."

American fans also complained that a Sudan born player (Deng) supported the South Sudan team with his huge salary as a Lakers player. If South Sudan hadn’t come so close to beating the USA team we never would have heard this ugliness. Maybe it’s time to rethink those $30 million dollar salaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wealth and culture. India has wealth but their culture doesn't value sports or arts. They very much so look down on professionals in those spaces.

Oh, do they? India also has extreme poverty with 60% of Indians receiving free grain rations so they don’t have to decide whether to eat or pay school fees. Don’t let the government of India fool anyone with manipulated numbers claiming they eliminated extreme poverty. The caste system is very much alive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, in India, people just don't place that importance on sports. Most middle/upper middle class people aren't willing to put in the time commitment equivalent of travel sports in the US, so you just aren't going to see that many elite athletes. For better or worse, they are putting that time into extra tutoring or other academic endeavors. It is only recently that people started placing importance on physical activity at all.

Indians will battle to the death

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Money

This. How is this even a question?