I just read this article in the NYTimes entitled: "Two Worlds of Sliding Sports, for the Haves and the Have-Nots"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/sports/olympics/26sliding.html?ref=sports
The point I take from it is that in many of the winter Olympic sports, there are extremely few people that have ever made a serious attempt to excel. Maybe a few thousand people in Germany and Austria actively pursue luge - the rest of us don't have the opportunity or the interest. I don't mean to only pick on luge - it's probably the same story for skeleton, bobsled, ski jumping, and (maybe) curling, isn't it?
By contrast, being an All-American in cross country indicates you're one of the top 40 (I think) athletes in a sport that has a huge base of potential, about 40K runners in US high school plus foreign talent. I'd say it's more impressive. One could probably also say that being a starter on D1 college basketball team is also more impressive than winning gold in one of these odd sports.
Thoughts on this?
I guess if I really wanted a good debate I should have posted this on letsluge.com. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it...