The difference between a ballerina and, say, a ski jumper is that a ballerina can get his/her start in a studio in a suburban strip mall and, if they become good enough, make their way to a studio at the NBS that may have fancy hardwood floors and lighting, but is otherwise something that people can build relatively cheaply. If that ballerina makes it to Karen Kain levels, she'll perform in front of a packed house of 2,000 people every two weeks for a season.
A ski jumper will have to train on some specially constructed concrete superstructure the height of a 20 storey condo built somewhere in the mountains and then compete maybe two or three times a year in an event that's mostly watched by people on TV who have nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon.
The idea that we should fund esoteric, niche activities like the obscure Olympic sports because it's very meaningful to a handful of people just doesn't wash in a world of finite resources.
Look at it this way: there are about 1,000 of us regular forum contributors and there may be 5,000 people who "compete" in discussions of urban affairs, local condo construction, and transport infrastructure in Toronto on a regular basis. Some of us start off on these forums, but may go on to be planners, developers, architects and civil engineers who can actually effect change. So, based on this logic, maybe the governments should build a bricks and mortar "Urban Toronto" centre somewhere downtown where we would be able to drop in and drink free espresso and debate urban issues in these specially-designed pods with leather couches and then use the biggest, fanciest Macs to render skylines and transit maps for each other's enjoyment. I mean, there's far more of us than there are ski jumpers or luge runners or indoor track cyclists, and some of us do become professionals, so why doesn't the government ante up, and hire Frank Gehry to design us a drop-in centre on the waterfront for $50 million? I mean, why are we sitting here posting from our home computers and working our day jobs when we could be paid to make threads and post about the use of spandrel in some specially-designed facility?