They may not be recognizable, but they are equally Olympian
Is it still possible to offend anyone except the ghost of Avery Brundage and a few no-show Iron Curtain sports commissars by announcing the obvious, that the defunct Olympic ideal of amateurism has always been humbug? The prohibition against pros was not high-minded in its origin, it was high-hat: a snobbish social exclusion of riding instructors, fencing masters and the like who sweated for their keep and were considered high-level servants. It was intended to ensure that those who participated in this festival of running and jumping were the sons and daughters of gentlefolk. Other Olympic ideals had more substance, and these endure. But the old leisure-class amateurism is dead. Not buried, unfortunately, because its rules still clutter the Olympic Games, getting in the way of sportsmen trying to make an honest living; just utterly and irredeemably dead.
"I'll be glad when we eliminate the word amateur from this sport," says Joe Douglas, coach of the Santa Monica Track Club and business manager for Superstar Carl Lewis. "It's a sham. If there were true amateurism in track and field, most of the athletes couldn't compete." Douglas should know. Not only can a track-and-field star like his client make as much as $1 million a year from his sport and still be eligible to compete as an "amateur," it is also possible for top-flight athletes known mostly within the sport to make perhaps $100,000, a handsome living.
One source of income for a first-class track-and-field athlete is appearance money. A star of the magnitude of Lewis, Edwin Moses or Mary Decker can ask for and get up to $15,000 a meet just to show up. In Europe, appearance fees are openly paid. In the U.S., the money passes under the table, and officials of the various sports federations that rule on who is and who is not an amateur pretend that the practice does not exist.
It is not only athletes and coaches who are tired of such pointless fakery. "To ignore reality is stupid, and that's what we're doing," says Robert Helmick, a Des Moines lawyer who is a vice president of the U.S.O.C. Helmick also points out, however, that the Olympic definition of amateurism has been broadened enormously over the past 20 years. Broadened indeed; it is as if the definition of a milk cow had expanded to include gray skin, huge floppy ears and a trunk. Since 1980, subsidies and stipends paid out by the U.S.O.C. have doubled, to an impressive figure of $90 million. But important changes had begun earlier. In 1978, as a result of an International Amateur Athletics Federation ruling, U.S. amateurs were permitted to make commercial endorsements if the proceeds were placed in trust funds, to be tapped for training and living expenses. Thus Marathoner Frank Shorter could begin pitching for Canon cameras and Hilton Hotels, Kodak could sign up Moses, Decker and Marathoner Alberto Salazar, and everyone who was anyone in track and field could finally admit to having been on the payroll of somebody's shoe company since high school.