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.
Injuries are an unfortunate fact of life in athletics. So are bad calls. So is questionable judging. The appropriate response is "get 'em next time/next season." But in the Olympics or World Cup, that's not a possibility. When all the top performers are competing against each other all the time on a professional circuit, as in skiing or skating, for example, it is ridiculous to attach exaggerated importance to once event every four years. In team sports, an annual championship is appropriate.
In the Olympic format, "wait till next year" doesn't work. Most athletes don't have another four years at peak levels. My point is simply that a World Championship in non-Olympic years is as great an achievement as a World Championship in the Olympic year. But the media uses the Olympics to artificially create superstars (not to mention the financial windfall of being turned into the media darling of the current games). The arbitrariness of it has turned me off.