As far as I'm concerned, Olympic athletes are some of the most privileged people on the planet. Instead of slaving away at several jobs to make ends meet, they can afford to train in exotic locations and at expensive arenas and facilities paid for by the working poor. For every benighted soul who scrapes and scrimps to somehow make it to the big event, who competes for the love of the sport (really?), there's hundreds of athletes hoping their first, second or third-place medal allows them to cash in big.
We already hear of Vancouverites having to be careful in case they offend Big Brother with any anti-games opinions. We're bombarded at every turn with messages about how wonderful the olympics are, frustratingly using small children to sell the idea that the Olympics are about pure, untainted, milk-of-human kindness efforts by society's marginalized, under-supported athletes.
The Olympics are about money, big money, huge unbelievable amounts of money that are transferred from the taxpaying citizens of the country to a select, privileged few. A bunch of extremely well-paid hockey players are going to participate next year, for what? The love of the sport? Come on. I feel that Canada may in fact disintegrate, or at least separate from British Columbia, if these wealthy children don't win the gold medal. I'm sure that most of them think it is their birthright to win, that the gold medals already belong to Canada.
To even suggest that these athletes, with their highly-tuned bodies and presumably very effective immune systems, should be given consideration ahead of those who are truly at risk from the flu, is to live in a fantasy world.
Unless, of course, they are simply trying to preserve their cash cow.