[DocTomoe]

The problem with easy solutions is that they aren't solutions, and they aren't easy.

It is massively unfair to a top athlete to not being allowed to compete because he's the second best in India, or China, or the United States, when a much lower-ranked athlete from, say, Burkina Faso is allowed to run merely because of their nationality.

[sfg]

The principle of open contest* avoids the problem you cite. Such a problem is inherent to international competition*. The mixture of limited open competition (multiple entries per country) introduces a fault into the system, which corrupts the contest at the highest level as detailed in the article. You make it less likely the best of anywhere will win, so that the second best of somewhere can compete. If you accept the competitive principle that is inherent to the entire design, then the problem goes away.

But yeah, I know most people won't accept this. That is cool. They'll continue to enjoy the Olympics; I'll continue to ignore it.

* In principle, I think a contest that aims to be the pinnacle of a sport, as the Olympics events do generally aim (Association Football being an exception), should be an open contest. However, I'm not sure if an Olympics that was formally open would actually be treated as anything other than effectively an international contest. Still, maybe open would be better (I'd be happy to see it tried), but it is not hard to see that it might cause issues of its own.

* in international competition, it is probably not even fair to consider it a problem, as it is really just an accepted part of such systems.

[DocTomoe]

Technically, the Olympics are considered an open event - while you are supposed to compete under your country's flag (more specifically: under your country's NOC), there is a process in place for when this is not possible[1].

The problem with the Olympics is a different one - an organisation that creates a highly complex event with construction and travel is dependant on national governments to support it (even if there is no corruption involved) - and that will invariably lead to said countries doing it for the prestige. I guess the only way around that would be setting up permanent Olympic venues and giving them a status like the UN General Assembly building

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Olympians_at_the_O...

[sfg]

So it is an open that has had international organisation layered on top. That does make more sense, in terms of how it got to where it is.

Another possibililty would be to relax the geographic grouping of the events. Maybe the Meta sponsored Olympics of the future will be willing to do that in the belief that VR/AR have made location less important. It'll be interesting to see how people's sense of physical location and togetherness change with new technology. I hope not, but maybe Meta's idea of 'Connection' will win in the end.