Never mind the usual puffery about what this month’s Winter Olympics are all about. Sure, there’s the beauty of sports, the spirit of friendly competition, the dedication of great athletes and all that. But the Winter Games are about a few other things as well: elitism, exclusion and the triumph of the world’s sporting haves over its have nots.

What the Winter Games are not is a truly international sporting competition that brings the best of the world together to compete, as the promotional blather would have you believe. Unlike the widely attended Summer Olympics, the winter version is almost exclusively the preserve of a narrow, generally wealthy, predominantly Caucasian collection of athletes and nations. In fact, I’d suggest that the name of the Winter Games, which start Friday, be changed. They could be more accurately branded “The European and North American Expensive Sports Festival.”
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Obviously, the climate and terrain in, say, Indonesia or Aruba aren’t highly conducive to molding superstar aerial skiers and biathlon champions. But it’s not just the presence or absence of snow and ice that determines Winter Olympics success, or even participation. If it were, some of America’s best ice skaters and speedskaters wouldn’t live and train in Southern California or Florida. If it were, athletes from countries like Peru, Chile, Nepal, Morocco, Afghanistan and Ethiopia — all blessed with soaring, snow-covered mountains — would be marching en masse in the Opening Ceremonies and fighting for the medal stand.

Instead, the more telling factors are economic. Would-be Winter Olympians need years of training, coaching and competition if they’re going to make it to the Games. All of these things require massive sums of money. A bobsled (or bobsleigh, in official IOC-speak) costs about $35,000, to say nothing of what it costs to build an Olympic-caliber bobsled run. A pair of speedskates might be relatively cheap, but how many countries have speedskating rinks? Most nations, even those with plenty of snow and cold, simply can’t afford such extravagances.

Remember the Jamaican bobsled team? Those lovable underdogs endeared themselves to many with their participation in the 1988 games in Calgary (the four-man team was the subject of the 1993 Disney movie “Cool Runnings” and finished a surprisingly high 14th in 1994). Less well-known is what happened — or didn’t happen — to the Jamaicans in the 2002 games in Salt Lake City: They didn’t show up. The team ran out of funding and had to stay home.

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