[Muta]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1820543.stm

Good article from the 2002 Olympics about the economy behind the Games. Interesting part:

The price of gold, silver or bronze

On the basis of the authors' calculations, it is possible to work out how much it would cost to perform better at the Olympics. Although there are certain anomalies - notably impoverished but sporty Romania - rich countries always perform best.

The Olympics, it seems, is an expensive business: to send an extra competitor, a country has to increase its GDP per head by $260.


An extra medal costs $1,700, and a gold $4,750, in terms of per-capita wealth. The richer the country, the cheaper the marginal cost of improvement: Poland would have to spend four times as much per head as would the US, in order to boost its presence at the games.

Just some food for thought.

Me personally, I see the Olympics as the pinnacle event of the sporting world; the chance for all games (no matter how popular they are in Canada) to come together and to display to the world what they're all about. I COMPLETELY RESPECT that.

I would hope that Canada strives to be the best it can be on the world stage; the Olympics is a great platform to do just that. Canadian athletics is very much a part of our culture and does help to define our national pride.
I can tell you this much: I would much rather have my tax dollars go to funding athletes that can compete with the rest of the world on the biggest stage of them all (the Olympics), than have my tax dollars go to government initiatives such as supporting / compensating reserves, gun registries, etc. that are critically flawed in not just logic, but execution.