Plus some big countries have thrown money at facilities and training in some sports , Winter and Summer,which we, or other European countries, can't or don't match, or the sport is part of the country's culture, as ice-hockey is in Canada or basketball in the US, so there is vast pool of youngsters to train and draw upon from the very beginning. We're a bit short of ice-rinks here;typically, Ayr, a town of about 2,000 in Ontario, has three;and the basketball basket is in almost every American backyard.