If you look at the medals won, it's clear that it's a very eurocentric competition. Apart from China (who go crazy for cold war reasons - the article disingenuously uses cold war countries for comparison), all the high performers are euro culture. Sure, Japan won 400 medals overall... but Germany has 1500... and even Finland has nearly as many summer medals as Japan.
Apart from China, who has invested heavily as a matter of pride, non-euro culture countries generally don't do well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-time_Olympic_Games_medal_ta...
Also, to be pedantic, the first sentence of the article is incorrect: Bangladesh has won zero medals.
I don't think it's a bad essay, but these were a couple of points I noticed.
You probably recall the film "Cool Runnings", in which the team did not win; the point was that they were plucky underdogs and did better than expected, but they didn't place.
The athletes there are really putting up with the best they have and can manage with the facilities, training and their other priorities in life.