Is the Olympics fair ? ?

"Point well taken" is the phrase most appropriate here. I'm not sure about your "draw pool" concept, and whether it has anything or "little to do with culture or anything else", but your basic concept is correct. Fairness in "who wins the most medals" has never been around. Every team / nation wants to win the most gold, just as in every sport, every team wants to win the most games or contests. A friend of mine once pointed out that in the NASCAR races, it's pretty predictable who's going to win, or within what small circle of competitors will the victor arise. The moving of Dale Ernhardt, Jr. from DEI to Hendricks Motors, was done for one purpose (in the long run) and that was to give Dale Jr. more chances for victory that he wasn't getting at DEI. He might have had other smaller agendas or reasons for the move, but the biggest picture was he wanted to win more. Everyone saw he wouldn't get it done at DEI. Professional athletes allow and seek trades to other franchises for the same reason, and in my preferred sport of bicycle racing, the racers try to get contracts with more successful teams so they can win more. The fairness comes in how they compete, or the rules established wherein every team, every racer, has an equal chance. But we all know that franchises with big money have more victories than franchises with less money. The New York Yankees is a perfect example of a franchise that spends as much money as possible to buy their winning seasons. Anyone can look at their history of "trades" and World Series Wins and see the correlation between money spent and victories won. The same is true in the Olympics. The nations with the most money have the greater chances of winning more victories. That's why the United States, some time ago, decided not to stick with the "Olympic ideal" of having amateur athletes when Russia and Cuba and others were paying their athletes very well, and were winning more. So, the U.S. stopped the "Olympic ideal" and began recruiting professional athletes, and look at the sudden increase in gold medals. So, basically, I think the original idea might have had some "fairness" involved in it, way back when the Greeks, et. al., were putting this Olympic thing together, but, that ideal has been lost long ago. It still exists. It's just not in practice any more. God Bless you.