[CarbineCaleb]

I agree that at the amateur level of sports in particular, equipment budget should not be the deciding factor.

Even for pro or olympic sports, I would rather have a contest with identical equipment (if very high performance), so that we test just the people, not the technology.

I do think that you need high quality equipment at the highest levels of competition though, for example, if olympic shooters used bargain guns, there probably wouldn't be any difference between them, because the limiting factor would be the gun. Just need it all to be the same.