Fair enough, those are good points. In principle I agree with both of you. I just think that all of these factors are secondary to the right geographical and meteorological conditions. There are plenty of countries that have the capacity to invest, but don’t care about medals at the Winter Olympics because they don’t have a culture in winter sports because they don’t have proper winters.
I also think the example of Italy vs Spain was not ideally chosen to make the argument.
We’re splitting hairs here… infrastructure will obviously only be where good winter conditions are. If no one considers your conditions good for winter sports they won’t come/invest so there will be less infrastructure.
Also, if you’ve never seen real ice outside, you’re less likely to get really into hockey or skating or bobsledding.
You are correct that there are also factors like culture, heritage in winter sports, infrastructure, financial backing, etc. But those are all dependent on having good mountains and winters in the first place. Northern Italy has them, Spain not so much.
Edit: To make a better case for your argument you could have picked a Caucasus Nation. Azerbaijan have great mountains with lots of snow, but are way less successful because of lack in funding, infrastructure and a culture around winter sports.
Italy includes most of the southern alps and specifically Alto Adige with the Dolomites, which is one of the most popular regions for alpine sports, be it winter or summer. Most of the Italian athletes are from that region of Italy, not from Puglia or Sicily.
Spain has mostly the Pyrenees, which are lower, have less snow on average, no glaciers and worse infrastructure. Sierra Nevada is tiny in comparison to what the Italian alps ca offer, albeit it’s an option for glacial skiing.
Your example actually shows that the other poster was right.
Shit will basically work by itself, we just gotta give it a little push.
The Sacklers handled the opioids already and China is supplying plenty of fentanyl… Even the bio-warfare is bound to be more effective than before with all the antivaxxers over there.