well,. wrote:
World class XC skiing is ridiculously expensive. Each member of the Norwegian and Swedish national teams travel with 60 pair of skis. One waxing on those skis cost 100-150 dollars. The Norwegian team has 20 full time wax technicians travelling with them.
No doubt that most sports are ridiculously expensive at the top of the game. I don't think it's relevant to look at that. Once you're at the top money is not a barrier to participation, but it is at the lower level for kids starting out in the sport and at the post-collegiate level when athletes are deciding if they want to continue to compete seriously.
Even distance running is expensive if you're at the top - massage therapy, physio, coaching, facility access (gym, pool, track), club fees, travel to meets (+hotel, +food), inability to have a real job (opportunity cost), training camps, etc. Plus gear and shoes if you don't have a contract or deal on those things. Maybe race entry fees, though this is rarely a significant cost outside of road races and only if you're too slow to get comp'd.
The thing that makes many sports different from distance running is that they are very expensive to get into or to compete in in any capacity. Although in distance running, the things I listed above might have some positive effect on performance, they're all in the marginal gains category to some degree. It's perfectly possible to get yourself to the elite or sub-elite level without them, and then gain a salary or sponsorship in order to access the expensive marginal gains based on promising talent. Arguably, in other sports some of the very expensive things are absolutely necessary to be in the conversation at all, regardless of fitness or talent. Cycling is a good example of this.
As a runner, I am a sub-elite in grad school and spend next to no money on participating at the national level. My only significant costs are shoes, some gas money for driving to races and physio if I get injured (my grad school health insurance is crappy). In no other sport could I envision spending less than $500/year while competing at the level I do. If I were in any other sport, I would have had to let go of wanting to compete at a high level due to financial restrictions.