I won’t say ‘most people have heard of them’, since I can’t claim that a Chinese 18 year old or Ugandan 70 year old is likely to have (probably not?) but they’re very famous internationally, yes. Especially going by song recognition rather than names. Certainly they’re a household name in other Western countries. Not Taylor Swift, Beatles, Queen or Michael Jackson level but maybe the next tier of fame.

Honestly had to read again. In just a couple of lines misunderstood, made a bizarre claim and self-obliviously claimed bias. Thus the pigeon plays chess. Ciao

What? You might have missed what I was saying. I am responding the claim that American football diminishes the US men’s chances. My point is that most countries have some huge disproportionate focus on a sport that is barely or not represented at the Olympics. One medal shot for men’s football out of hundreds of events is hardly tipping the balance (especially given the US women’s football - an advantage there if anything). So the US isn’t disadvantaged by its focus significantly more than other countries.

quite good

Ouch. As far as medal shots go? Odd to assume the American team was quite good. If this is based on a once-off victory against Pakistan, the T20 World Cup is not the mainstream cricket WC, most of the star players are Indians who moved there a few years ago and aren’t citizens (unsure how that plays with the IOC), and the US doesn’t even qualify to play in the more serious ICC Cricket World Cup. It’s just… no.

Basketball has grown to overtake rugby but I never said it wasn’t also international, so no idea what you mean by that.

typical bias

Um, typical America-centric bias, then.

Other countries have their focus on sports like football (only one medal available for the men), cricket (none), rugby (only one shot for a secondary and very different format of it) etc. It’s not like most countries are drowning in their own sports.

If anything American sports are very, very over represented at the Olympics.

It’s not as simply as trying out. The NOCs for new and strange events can often be semi-corrupt and nepotistic or use bizarre and simply wrong criteria. In this case, she was shunted forward through her connections. She didn’t win some national contest for this. There’s a reason it’s an ad hoc event like this and not an embarrassment with some long established event. NOCs frankly shouldn’t be sending anyone who got there in such a strange, untried manner and who frankly isn’t a serious contestant.

If my mate Steve were connected by an NOC branch with weird and insane criteria for selection and got rung up out of the blue to go and compete when he didn’t deserve it, maybe he’d go too. I’d hope not.

With the current system it honestly doesn’t make economic sense for a poorer city to host the Olympics - it just hurts the local economy overall, being extremely expensive and leaving huge wasted construction and disruption in their wake, and there’s a reason applications have been drying up.

But then we don’t want it to be the exclusive preserve of richer cities which have hosted it before. Something needs to change.

Maybe letting it be shared between several cities, or hosted across a nation/region like most major world cups? And maybe with a more international system of funding?

Bollocks. My mate Steve should be allowed to go to the Olympics then. He’s better at dancing and several actual sports and it’s all just a ‘fair go’. And maybe a couple of hundred million other people