COUNTER ARGUMENT: The ‘olympic medal problem’ with larger, wealthier countries o

COUNTER ARGUMENT: The ‘olympic medal problem’ with larger, wealthier countries originates with more national opportunities to attract talent, whereas smaller countries have fewer such opportunities. Secondly, opportunities, especially economic, often require scale, and athleticism generally requires fewer inputs and smaller organizations. As such the olympics create higher selection pressure in favor of talent in smaller countries producing the observed ratio of medals to population. So the ratio of opportunity to population is ‘as expected’. And yes we should pay attention to those small countries and credit them accordingly because after all, we are lionizing sport. 😉