The Other Thing About The Olympics I Hear ...

... is that they are biased toward privileged Europe and North America. This is hard to argue. How many African countries are represented in the Winter Games? How many black athletes even?

Who but wealthy whites could afford to compete? How many people have regular access to a luge course, for example? All this is true.

When compared to somelike that 100 m dash in the summer, it seems clear that the ski jump has a higher monetary threshold for entry. The flaw in this argument is to somehow separate the summer games from the winter. The 100 m dash requires only an open road for practice, in theory. But if you want to be the best in the world, you're going to need a trainer, a real high quality track to run on, and you probably can't hold down a job while you're in training so you'll need money. Some of this is going to come from private wealth or patrons in a larger country, but in poorer countries, a lot comes from the government and that country's Olympic committee.

Therefore, I would argue, the cost of entry into the Olympics--any Olympics--is bound to be high for any sport, country, or individual athlete. You need money to be able to have the time to practice to be the best, whether your own, borrowed, or sponsored.

So the barrier to Kenya's entrance into the Winter Games is not necessarily a monetary barrier--if they really wanted to support a ski jumper they could--but a geographical one. The countries that compete in the winter games are countries with snow. Latvia is not the richest country in the world, but they have plenty of snow and ice and can in turn compete.

So I'm not sure I totally buy the argument that the Winter Olympics are filtered by wealth or race any more than the summer Olympics.