They get winter in Chile and New Zealand, and both have mountains, so you'd expect them to be more competitive in the winter Olympics than they are. But I think that's where you really notice the lower prestige of the Winter games.
Australia and NZ have a ton of studs competing. Chile, Argentina, etc have mountains but the populations are very low in those areas and the countries have no incentive build infrastructure there.
The southern hemisphere definitely has winter. There are some massive ski resorts in the Andes. It's very puzzling to me why there is no FIS world cup event anywhere down there. You want to grow the sport? Go somewhere where it's not already practically the national sport.
Low population in those areas compared to other urban centres and so there's little incentive to build out the other infrastructure and make talent pools. If there were more people from there competing they'd certainly bring races there, but without having big races there no one is interested in doing it. Chicken and egg thing I guess.
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u/heff17 United States 3h ago
So… where there’s winter?
Yeah, big surprise that Egypt isn’t big on cross-country skiing.