While watching some events from the Olympics, I was struck by how much training must go into this. But this endless training reminded me of what Malcolm Gladwell discusses in Outliers: only a small number of people get the advantages that allow them to have all of this training. In other words, you are more likely to experience the “Matthew effect” if your parents, social network, or country has the resources to allow you to do all of this training. This doesn’t mean that these competitors aren’t skilled but it is not like all of the world’s population has an equal opportunity to take the path toward the Olympics. (Of course, not everyone would want to, either.)

I’m sure someone has already had this idea but what about some sort of “everyman Olympics”?