I've always felt like I would enjoy the Olympics much more if one of the following conditions were satisfied: 1) It was a within-country competition, as in states and provinces of a country compete against each other; provided that it is a country more like the U.S. and not like Indonesia or Georgia, where there are major disparities between provinces and separatism issues. The National Games in Indonesia are like a miniature Olympics with similar problems, because the top teams are always Javanese teams even though they hold it in many different provinces - the other provinces are just too underdeveloped to win anything. 2) We had a world government and an economic aid system that cut down massively on the gaps between the really rich and healthy and the really poor and sad countries, so that essentially it was more like a within-country competition. 3) The "national" aspect of it was practically eliminated and it was organized as a competition between individuals, not nations, the way the tennis Grand Slams and the iceskating Grand Prix are. Even the Grand Prix is organized by country - each country holds its own qualifying national competition (the U.S. Figureskating Championships, for instance) that means a lot to the skaters in the first place, and the top however many are eligible to compete in the Grand Prix, but they're not really teammates and they're all just out for themselves. Brian Joubert, a French skater, has fans in China, for example. Everyone just likes who they like. In both of these sports the commentators have over the years given up trying to push the Americans competing and just focused on the stars.
For me, that's the only way the Olympics could not make international relations worse.
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1) It was a within-country competition, as in states and provinces of a country compete against each other; provided that it is a country more like the U.S. and not like Indonesia or Georgia, where there are major disparities between provinces and separatism issues. The National Games in Indonesia are like a miniature Olympics with similar problems, because the top teams are always Javanese teams even though they hold it in many different provinces - the other provinces are just too underdeveloped to win anything.
2) We had a world government and an economic aid system that cut down massively on the gaps between the really rich and healthy and the really poor and sad countries, so that essentially it was more like a within-country competition.
3) The "national" aspect of it was practically eliminated and it was organized as a competition between individuals, not nations, the way the tennis Grand Slams and the iceskating Grand Prix are. Even the Grand Prix is organized by country - each country holds its own qualifying national competition (the U.S. Figureskating Championships, for instance) that means a lot to the skaters in the first place, and the top however many are eligible to compete in the Grand Prix, but they're not really teammates and they're all just out for themselves. Brian Joubert, a French skater, has fans in China, for example. Everyone just likes who they like. In both of these sports the commentators have over the years given up trying to push the Americans competing and just focused on the stars.
For me, that's the only way the Olympics could not make international relations worse.