Skewed in favour of rich nations, illogical rules, too many sports: Do the Olympics need a rethink?

Yet another Olympics has ended and the torch has literally been passed to Los Angeles for the 2028 Games. As we savour the many moments of sporting excellence over the past fortnight, we also need to admit that there are serious problems with the Olympics. Much can be said about the administration of the Olympics and sports in general. Here, I am concerned with the Games itself, which have inherent inequalities, showcase sports that are barely popular and plagued with strange rules. In fact, some that do not even qualify as sport.

That the modern Olympics has always been heavily loaded in favour of wealthy countries is no secret. There is enough evidence to suggest that richer countries, with high human development indicators, win more medals. Indeed, the top 10 nations in the medal tally for the 2024 Olympics are the United States at first position followed by China, Japan, Australia and the host nation France.

In fact, China is an outlier since, despite its high gross domestic product, its per capita income and human development index rank is much lower than the others in the top 10. But China has overcome these disadvantages by a policy of medal harvesting that goes back over...

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