The cost of campaigning is the real expense of the Olypmic program. Yes an F-18 is less than a Tornado, but when you get beyond the platform, the other expenses are not much different. Campaigning though accounts for 80-90% of the overall Olympic costs.
Once again, those percentages apply for the US and eastern Europe, but not necessarily for the rest of the world.
The typical Brazilian olympic T campaign spends more on boats and equipment than on travel expenses.
Until the last games, when they brought two gold medals home, sailors barely had money to participate in the minimum of events needed to classify the country in a given class for the games. I am sure the situation is about the same in most poor and developing countries.
The situation is changing slowly for Torben, Scheidt and a couple of other names, but even Scheidt can not travel as much as he would need and trains mostly in Brazil, due to money constraints.
Different tax environments, distances, costs of living and access to funding dramatically change those porcentages.
