Seems like no players from other countries
There were usually a few foreigners at the MSO go events, and more at the event as a whole. Maybe Brexit reduced it. But yes it’s not comparable to the Olympics (the WMSG was closer). Go is an old established game where to get to the mid to high dan level of the people who will turn up and win the event takes years of effort, which I expect is unlike some of the other events like modern board games, so if you are going for the Pentamind (which combines scores across multiple events) and you aren’t already a strong go player it’s not a good choice.
2 fun facts: I played Aja Huang, of later Alpha Go fame, in the 2014 MSO, lost in the final. I was aware of his work with Go bots with Remi Coulom (of CrazyStone) and that he’d come to London to work for Google in AI and hinted it was interesting but was sworn to secrecy, so it all made sense later that this was the genesis of AlphaGo. And Demis Hassabis, of DeepMind/AlphaGo fame, won the Pentamind a record 5 times in the late 90s to early 2000s.
The first Mind Sports Olympiad was held in 1997, according to Wikipedia.
Which is correct. I was there. It featured Go.