Personally, I know international football is often a proxy war between nations. And certainly the USA and the USSR turned the Olympics into a proxy Cold War.
But the premise is tiresome. Maybe it's just me being in Portugal where we're excited just to see someone win a single bronze all week. But the whole gold medal count competition between China and the USA comes off as a tasteless analog of the billionaire dick-measuring contest between Space X, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic.