Look at it the other way around then. Let's say the IOC tells the EU - hey you guys have a unified government so you can only have one Olympic team. This means instead of a combined 40 ski jumpers they would be limited to 4. So if reducing the teams leads to fewer participants doesn't it stand to reason that increasing the teams will lead to more participants. Besides, any limit on the number of participants is a creation of the IOC and can be changed.

Look at it the other way around then. Let's say the IOC tells the EU - hey you guys have a unified government so you can only have one Olympic team. This means instead of a combined 40 ski jumpers they would be limited to 4. So if reducing the teams leads to fewer participants doesn't it stand to reason that increasing the teams will lead to more participants. Besides, any limit on the number of participants is a creation of the IOC and can be changed.

Nope. Especially not if each team just has fewer participants - that is, you end up distributing (arguendo) 100 athletes across 40 teams instead of 20 teams. Ultimately, there's a finite number of Olympic class athletes in the world, and creating more teams doesn't change that number. Just like there are only so many elite athletes capable of playing football at the NFL level, or baseball at the MLB level. Yeah, you can add teams, just for the sake of saying you've added teams, but eventually, you just water down each team with folks who, again, have no hope of piercing Olympic elite status, and are there merely to pad numbers.