The other important factor in reducing the valve train weight and using a 1:1 ratio of cam lift to valve lift is that the cam wears a lot better.
Because everything wears slower, and there are much fewer moving parts an OHC setup is almost maintenance free whereas a pushrod setup will always need adjustment - you have the tappets themselves, their interface with the pushrods, pushrod to rocker, rocker to shaft, rocker to valve stem. Wear in any of these will affect the clearances on a pushrod setup.
There are some advantages. It's much easier being able to keep the engine timed up when you're taking the head on and off, such as when checking clearances, for example. Then again, it's a pain when you need to tweak the cam timing. :-/
I'm not sure anyone has ever made a 100% reliable cam drive. Chain, belt and gears all have their faulure modes. Maybe we should go to using vertical driveshafts and bevel gears like the old aero engines had?
One day someone'll invent a cost effective actuator that will allow the ECU to directly control valve opening and closing events and we'll eliminate the cam completely, and have some real fun. How lairy would you like your cam today, sir? 8-)
Kevin