I think the Olympics are prestigious because it is such a large competition. Every nation pretty much competes in a large spectacle. So if you win, it means you're the best in the world. The Olympics has more eyeballs on it than the world championship for most sports. And as said, it's objectively measured (although some sports like diving, boxing and gymnastics are determined by subjective scoring to some extent). The only sport I can think of which has more viewers is the Fifa World Cup, and indeed in football/soccer the Fifa World Cup is considered more prestigious than the Olympics.

And as you know, Alan Turing pioneered computer science and helped saved millions of lives, so he deserves our respect :-) Perhaps prestige is like natural snowball kind of effect, like how the rich will naturally get richer. A prestigious event becomes somewhat prestigious, so people want to win it. Then more people want to win it. Then it becomes more prestigious, etc.

>> in football/soccer the Fifa World Cup is considered more prestigious than the Olympics

That has nothing to do with number of viewers though. It is just a dirty trick from FIFA to eliminate competition: national teams in Olympics are junior (U-23) teams because FIFA does not allow senior teams to participate.

Didn't know that. That's weird.

Prestige is often fickle... it’s kind of a truism that the most prestigious artists (painters, writers, sculptors, etc) never enjoy success in their lifetimes, but rather find audiences well after they have passed.

In a hundred years, the olympics and the nobel prize could be seen as quaint reminders of an earlier time — entirely without prestige, leaving the observer wondering why we cared so much in the first place.