Quote:
Originally Posted by Trip
If we focused on medals much more so than we do now, we could rise to meet the chinese.
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The only country that has beaten us for total medals won in any olympics from 2000 on has been Germany. They did it in the 02 and 06 winter olympics. It doesn't look like that is going to happen this year though. China won more gold medals than the US did in Beijing, but the US won more medals overall. That was also with the advantage of China hosting. I don't expect that to continue in 2012.
To the original question, I think most foreign competitors are training at America's colleges while students there. The colleges are paying for the facilities. They also decide who attends their school. They appear to believe they ultimately benefit from bringing these foreign athletes over. I'm not sure how it would function either outside of a total ban on foreign athletes at American colleges. My other issue is I really don't care. Its just the olympics. Outside of generating a bit of nationalism and xenophobia it isn't like they really matter. The whole idea seems impractical to implement and of limited value.