More on the Olympics...

To add to the earlier posting on the Winter Olympics and Latin America's lack of participation, I wanted to add my comments and another article I found on Lexis-Nexis: Though more nations enter, Winter Games medals remain dominated by exclusive club. The article talks about how the Winter Olympics are still dominated by wealthy Northern nations with colder climates, while "no medals have ever gone to Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia or the Middle East". Only a handful of Latin American athletes are even at the Olympics, and none have even a remote prospect of winning a medal in Torino. I saw a report on a Costa Rican cross country skiier who was fifty years old and fell several times during the race-it was an achievement that he finished the race at all, supposedly. I think it is partly because most Latin American countries' climates are warmer, but I think it also a lack of resources...there certainly are mountains in Latin America where athletes could train, but no one is that interested (see Bolivian comment in the article), and even if they were, they couldn't afford the fancy training facilities and coaching that you need for most winter olympic sports. So the Winter Olympics appear to be another example of the inequality between developed and developing regions.