This is one of the reasons I have come to dislike the Olympics. In this day and age, the top athletes are competing against each other all year, every year. It is absurd to attach disproportionate importance to a single event. That is compounded by events that are contaminated by subjective judging. I dislike the soccer World Cup for the same reason.
Team sports should play an annual world championship. It doesn't need to be done world cup style, with all the buildup, group play, and hype; just integrate a world championship competition into the rhythm of existing league play. In individual sports, the world championship should be awarded based on cumulative points in a cycle of top tier events over the year. As the Olympics stand today, they are conducted for the media, not the athletes.
The equity case is especially acute in injury situations. It is a routine story: the world champion who has dominated a sport for two or three seasons comes up with an injury at the Olympics. The media is expert at milking such situations for "drama and tragedy" stories, but it's time to dig deeper and question the system that attaches so much prestige (and down the road, money) to single events.
Same goes for the Super Bowl and the BCS Championship...a team can be great all year, then suffer a key injury right before the big game, and the season then is all for naught.