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According to the Olympic Charter:

The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries.

As if; elite sport is now dominated by national training and development programs into which governments pour literally tons of cash:

Kevin Norton is a professor of exercise science at the University of South Australia. He says sport at an elite level is expensive and becoming more so.

"We estimated back in 2000 that it was about $40 million per gold medal," he said.

"I imagine that with inflation, the cost of Olympic 'gold' has increased ... and also inflates at a faster rate because other countries like China and the UK are putting in so much money," he said.

If that estimate is correct, Australia's 2000 Olympic tally of 16 gold medals cost us the modest sum of $640 million. To put that in perspective, even at today's record gold price that amount of money would buy over 18 1/2 tons of real gold rather than 16 gold plated medals. Jeez, and I thought arts funding was a huge waste of money.