COMMENTARY : No Tears, Only Cheers for Pay Plan

Amateurism is dead.

This is news?

When U.S. Olympic Committee officials recently announced their performance-related, financial incentive plan for athletes, the “i’s” and “t’s” of which will be dotted and crossed during meetings this weekend at Salt Lake City, they anticipated an outcry from the public but not from the media, which were supposed to know better.

The reaction has been the opposite. Mike Moran, the USOC’s director of public information and media relations, said this week that the committee has not received one letter or phone call from the public. The media, however, have written and spoken volumes about the end of amateurism.

Where, my esteemed colleagues, have you been? Did you also miss the fall of the Shah of Iran, the end of the Carter Administration, Ali’s last fight?

They occurred at about the same time, 1979 and ‘80, that the USOC was debating, and ultimately adopting, a plan to pay athletes based on their performances.

In 1981, International Olympic Committee members, some of whom are not that far removed from Jurassic Park, eliminated the word amateur from the IOC charter, recognizing that the concept was out of date.

Indeed, it was out of date. But it was not a particularly old concept. Contrary to popular belief, the Greeks did not compete in the ancient Olympics purely for the love of olive wreaths and sweat. They often were rewarded with large sums of money and other perks for their triumphs. As in the current IOC charter, the word amateur does not exist in the Greek language.

No, amateurism is an English tradition, born in the 18th Century, according to classicist David C. Young, “as an ideological means to justify an elitist athletic system that sought to bar the working class from competition.”

After the first 40 years of the modern Olympics, not even Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France, the founder of the movement, could justify the concept, declaring in 1936 to a French journalist, “How very stupid has been this Olympic history of amateurism!”

His successors among the IOC leadership attempted to uphold amateurism as an Olympic ideal for four more decades, but it steadily eroded, particularly after Eastern Bloc governments began openly subsidizing athletes. When confronted, they argued, correctly, that the United States was equally culpable because of its system of granting scholarships to college athletes.

Under the guidance of its president, Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, the IOC ended the hypocrisy 12 years ago, beginning the continuing process that allows international sports federations to admit professionals to the Olympics.

But even before then, the USOC took advantage of liberalized rules to establish Operation Gold, a program that awarded $2,500 to the first eight finishers in the Olympics and other significant international competition.

The USOC subsequently began a more encompassing athletes’ subsistence program that included direct payments to athletes, college grants, assistance in getting jobs and insurance.

It was not, however, until earlier this year that the USOC, prodded by athletes, decided to increase the money available through Operation Gold. Retroactive to last winter, an athlete who finishes between first and eighth in that sport’s major international competition in non-Olympic years will receive up to $5,000.

And, starting with next year’s Winter Games in Norway, athletes who finish between first and fourth in the Olympics will receive up to $15,000.

Although an improvement, that is not particularly lucrative compared to the benefits offered Olympians in some countries. Spain, in 1992, rewarded its gold medalists $1 million. Greece recently decided to give the same perks to Olympic gold medals as it does to members of its parliament, including cars, housing loans and jobs.

Most U.S. Olympians will never become millionaires solely from financial incentives they receive from the USOC, but the committee’s executive director, Harvey Schiller, said that Operation Gold will continue to expand.

“We want to make sure that we do not exclude anyone from Olympic sport because he or she cannot afford to participate,” he said.

There are U.S. athletes, of course, who already are as wealthy as some of the captains of industry, princes and princesses who sit on the IOC. It is because of them, particularly professional basketball and tennis players and certain track and field athletes and figure skaters, that the USOC has postponed until this weekend the adoption of the new Operation Gold package.

Eager to avoid the misperception that dollars and cents contributed by the public to the Olympic effort will find their way into the full pockets of Charles Barkley and Jim Courier, the USOC is considering various options.

The best one would award the prize money to the richer athletes with the understanding that they would donate it back to their sports. Tennis players, for instance, already have tentatively agreed to give money they win in the Olympics to inner-city youth programs.

But no matter how much good the USOC’s money does, Operation Gold will have critics. Some will complain that the romance has been taken out of the Olympics, that there will be no more of those inspirational stories involving poor kids who, through grit and determination, overcome their circumstances to triumph.

For every one of those stories, however, there were hundreds more during this century about athletes who could not approach their potential because they did not have enough financial support. Their troubles were multiplied because of the now virtually extinct concept of amateurism.

Good riddance.