Not playing doesn't just hurt yourself

A quick comment in the recent selections for the Australian Olympiad team (NB I am not revealing my selections, or who has been selected as there is still a chance of appeals by non selected players)

For the last few Olympiads I've been one of the selectors for the Australian teams. This year I was on the selection panel for the Open and Women's teams. One issue that arose for me was the geographical advantage/disadvantage some players suffered from. For a couple of players, the access to strong players was somewhat limited, making it harder for me to rank them highly. When they did play similar events to other players (ie international FIDE rated events), the results were quite comparable, but it was in their 'home' tournaments where they fell behind.
It wasn't because they scored badly, but simply because there wasn't enough strong players to test themselves against. And as playing in the Olympiad requires you to play against strong players, a 80% score against a field of 1700's isn't as impressive as a 50% score against 2100's.
Sadly, in at least a couple of cases, it isn't because there are no strong players close by, but that there aren't enough 'active' strong players close by. Now there are many reasons for choosing not to play (especially if you are a strong player), but it is becoming clear to me, that this has a knock on effect for other players. And I would hate to think that this would contribute to a cascading effect of discouraging the next level down from playing as well.