Olympic Spirit: it was originally for amateurs so that they could keep the common people from competing and beating gentlemen. It then morphed into state sponsorship as a political tool: Eastern Bloc anyone! Add in corruption, cheating blah blah.

I suppose it's all the Brits fault judging by some of the crap spouted on here.

To expand on KB's point, the olympics (originally) allowed only amateurs, so as to limit competition from non-rich people, since non-rich people who weren't professional athletes would have to work for a living and therefore have limited time to train, and perhaps compete. The rich people ("gentlemen" from wealthy families) didn't need to work and so could devote their time to training and competition. Their athletic triumphs (with limited competition from superior ability working class people) could then serve as the basis for impressing women and bragging to their fellow rich people.

As for the olympics being about sport, and all people coming together in the spirit of athletic competition without the burden of politics, nationalism, etc., what a bunch of hooey. If that's what it were about, then the whole competition wouldn't be based around countries, countries choosing who can compete, individual representing countries, teams representing countries, playing the national anthem of the winner in the awards ceremonies, etc. If the top 20 athletes in a given event are all from one country, then why not let them all compete in the olympics? If it were about sport, individuals could and would represent themselves, and for genuine team sports, should be free to form whatever teams they want, regardless of combination of countries involved, such as doubles teams in professional tennis - the only "requirement" should be that the contestants can actually get to the site of the competition (so may have to deal with passports or visas as a practical matter). There would be no artificial team scoring conglomerations for inherently individual sports, such as gymnastics. There would be some type of qualifying procedures, totally independent of country, for who could compete in the olympics. I suppose that the governing body could see fit to have some wildcards or "affirmative action" to help out "disadvantaged" athletes, but I'm not much in favor of that, since this would be at the expense of the next most qualified athletes.

..........well, there's one Kenyan already using it

Well stated and I agree. Not to mention the $$$$ involved in the Olympics. From tickets that only VIP and foreign dignitaries can get and the common person can't. From the $$$$ of who can advertise and who can't. From the $$$$ who can broadcast the sporting events and who can't. The Olympics aren't about sport anymore, but are now a corporate plug for big money.

^ true 'dat.

I thinks it pretty cool that we all get to ride what the pros ride and I understand the reason for the availability rule and all the bike regulations in general; they are trying to make it a level playing field for all the riders and hoping that the one with the best tactics and training will win and not the one with the best bike.

However I think it would be awesome if they did away with these rules for the pros or at least just for the Olympics; teams and nations are always going to put massive amounts of R&D dollars into their bikes anyways so that they fall under the regulations but are still superior to the competition. I doubt it would change much what is offered to us and I for one would love to watch some super humans (face it, that's what most of these pros are) ride space bikes in absurd positions at ludicrous speeds for our enjoyment. Just go watch Boardman and Indurain riding in the superman position on those crazy bikes and tell me that it isn't awesome or at least entertaining.

Also I want one of these helmets really badly, I drink any aero kool aid that white papers tell me too. But 3000 is kind of insane, I feel like someone with some devotion and that kind of money could rent a tunnel, eye ball the GB helmet and make their own that would have near the same aerodynamics.

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"But when you hit that asphalt down below nothing else matters, your pulse is skyrocketing toward 200"
650b Ritchey
Colnago Mapei
S-5 VWD

Yeah, in theory the UCI want everything available to everybody, but at the same time they have not put a rule in place that is effective in regulating that.
It would be fairly easy to do, but would be likely to upset bike/equipment companies, so really back to the UCI - they can't have it both ways.

I'm a +1 on the battle of the engineers philosophy too btw, for TT and track for sure.