Olympics are suppose to be for amateurs. They are not. Here is how we can fix it: Every 4 years (1 years prior to Olympics) we will draw athletes from random citizens from each country on earth. If you are selected, you have 1 year to train yourself to compete in a given event. It's up to your country to provide you with time, training, and transportation to the Olympic event (otherwise you just don't go).
To avoid corruption, and to avoid the problems with identifying billions of undocumented people on earth, the draft will be carried out with help of random coordinates + random time. For example, let's say the random olympic machine spits out:
48.822183,2.1985295,Sep 2 2016 10:45:00 AM local time
An olympic secret agent begins his/her travel to the location, making sure that they arrive exactly at the specified time (if not, another coordinate + time will be drawn). Once they arrive they approach the closest person to them at the time and inform them of the good news. If no one is around (middle of a lake), they will immediately navigate due west (as much as practically possible) and the first human over the age of 18 and under the age of 40 will be drafted. For sanity of the olympic agents, areas of earth that have extremely low population density will be disqualified and new number will be drawn instead.
Some countries will be lucky and the draft will select from their elite. Some countries will have more resources to dedicate to changing a fattie into a lean running machine within a year...but in the end this will be better than what we have now.-- ixnaum, Aug 05 2016 "Heavy Legs" http://news.bbc.co....pondent/7779126.stm [hippo, Aug 08 2016] What about lazy people? What about disabled people?-- pocmloc, Aug 06 2016 //What about disabled people?//
Hmmm. Either they could be drafted to the Paralympics instead, or they could go to the Olympics regardless. I favour the latter.
If it's up to the country to pay, rich countries will still predominantly win. I suggest that instead it would make sense to require all contestants train at the same facility, effectively all expenses paid, with some additional salary.
Also, with the navigation as described, people on the west coast of lakes, unpopulated areas &c are more likely to get drafted. This is gameable. Instead, I suggest that an area be selected, based on the initial point. It would then be relatively straightforward to count every suitable human within at the alloted time, and choose one at random. The area can be scaled dependant on probable population density ahead of time.-- Loris, Aug 07 2016 Is there a cut off point? What about a person with a bad back? Or heavy legs? Or depression?-- pocmloc, Aug 07 2016 I thought this was an idea for a super strength new beer :-)-- xenzag, Aug 07 2016 ^ Artificially hopped, doped and enhanced for superior performance by Putin Brewers, KGB, LLC.-- whatrock, Aug 07 2016 //Is there a cut off point?
Unlike military draft, this draft is not mandatory. You can opt out without providing a reason. Your nation may pressure you to accept because if you decline they lose a spot. There are no substitutes allowed.-- ixnaum, Aug 07 2016 But your nation may also put pressure on you to decline if they think you're useless. More dictatorial countries may put pressure on everyone except elite athletes to decline.-- hippo, Aug 08 2016 No I meant a cut off between able bodied olympocs and paralympics.-- pocmloc, Aug 08 2016 random, halfbakery