After 26 years of being consciously aware of the Olympics and being reasonably indifferent to the concept of the whole (though interested in several parts within) I have developed three opinions.
1. Any sport that has an extant “best of the world” competition should not be in the Olympics.
2. The Olympics started as a competition of pure athleticism. Events that require the opinions of judges should not be included.
3. We shouldn't be tallying medals by nations. Nations should participate as the pool from which teams can be made and their local Olympic committees deciding which athletes can partake, but that's it. It shouldn't be a competition between nations.
@levisan the original olympics were a sort of festival for Zeus. The olympics as reconstituted are a globalist function. They are precisely about nations, founded as the (keyword first:) International Olympic Committee in the late 19th century.
As the olympics sweeps through a city, billions are pissed away on athletic facilities that will likely never be used again, and as much again on 1984-ish security architecture that will. It's at least as corrupt as FIFA, and a feeding trough for favored contractors and agencies.
By point:
1. Not all countries support or organize all the same sports, so the programs of various countries get to play on the world stage so long as they play at the best level of their nation.
Olympic standards, in turn, often become national standards (hence 25m and 50m pools around the world.)
2. No it wasn't. Judges (and referees) are absolutely necessary to deal with corner cases and close calls. Subjective issues like ice skating performance require the insight of experienced skaters and judges to be ranked. Olympic events resolve in rankings, not participation trophies.
3. That defeats the purpose of national representation and the vision of the IOC. It's about globalism, representing nations as participants in a single global platform, like the UN and other global organizations.
