It also helped that the Olympics were big business by that point, with television rights fees, sponsorship money and similar sources of income. Having huge, marquee-level celebrity athletes brought in lots more money. Pierre de Coubertin , the founder of the International Olympic Committee IOC in , had intended that Olympic competition should be among amateurs rather than professionals. However, in , the IOC approved compensation for amateur athletes 1.
Eastern nations were sponsored to train and compete on a full-time basis by their governments. As a result, US athletes found it difficult to compete with athletes from eastern nations, resulting in the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act in allowing US athletes to receive compensation. Moreover, professionals had better brand-recognition than amateurs, as the following quote notes 2 :.
The pro athletes are pre-sold to the public, which means increased viewership. After these developments, professionals became eligible for the Olympics 3 :. After the Games, the IOC voted to declare all professionals eligible for the Olympics, subject to the approval of the international federations in charge of each sport.
Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why are professional athletes allowed to compete in the Olympic games? Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 3 months ago. Active 4 years, 7 months ago. Viewed 39k times. The definition of an amateur athlete is someone who doesn't receive compensation : Amateur sports are sports in which participants engage largely or entirely without remuneration.
Why are professional athletes now allowed to compete in the Olympic games? Improve this question. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Because a yawn, symbolically, was how the public greeted what might have been the most controversial change in rules that the International Olympic Committee ever instituted. The one firm rule that always governed the Olympic Games was that amateur athletes were permitted to compete.
Professional athletes were not. And the fans, far from protesting in outrage at the change, didn't care. In fact, they seemed to like it a lot. In the Olympic eras before television, athletes who accepted money for their performances might as well have been lepers, in the eyes of the IOC.
If it was discovered that you got paid for playing, or that you accepted commercial endorsements, you were shunned, banished, cast to the cold winds.
In the most famous example of the inflexibility of the Olympic organizers, Jim Thorpe, perhaps America's finest athlete of all time, had his gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon in the Olympics stripped, and his achievements nullified, because he had once accepted small amounts of money for playing semi-pro baseball during his college summers.
It broke his heart. The medals were reinstated in -- 30 years after his death, 30 years after the moment could have given him any comfort. Torch starts final leg before London Olympics open.
It may be hard for young viewers of this summer's London Olympics to imagine, but all the sponsorships, advertisements and marketing hoopla that are a standard part of big-dollar contemporary Olympic Games were thought to be an insult to the Olympic spirit not so long ago. The Olympics were supposed to be about love of sport, not love of money. The president of the IOC during the years of television's phenomenal growth was an American, Avery Brundage, and the guiding principle of his reign was what was called the "amateur code.
In a speech, Brundage said:. But once Brundage was gone, the floodgates opened. The IOC, after his regime, realized that commercial interests could turn the Olympics into a bottomless goldmine.
And to bring in viewers, it was determined that an effective lure would be the presence of the greatest and most famous athletes in the world.
Many of whom are professionals. At this point in the history of the games, amateurism was less about the creation of a standard for purity and equality in competition. While the word amateur at this point was still relatively unknown and undefined, de Coubertin gave it a strong ideological tie to the Olympics that proved very difficult to one day strip away. The popularity of the Olympics began to grow during the major international conflicts in the early s.
The international bragging rights that came along with winning Olympic events on a grand stage gave the IOC an unprecedented amount of publicity. Because amateurs were competing, the playing field seemed even when it came to Olympic competition. The battlefield was ruled by the best militaries, but the track could be conquered by anyone who put their mind to it. The environment brought about feelings of nationalism in every participating country that amateurs — regular athletes who love their craft — could end up being national heroes.
However, issues with the institution of amateurism began to surface throughout the early and middle years of the s. Competition breeds innovation, so while the national importance and coverage of the Olympics began to grow, so did the hunger and willingness to do what it took to win.
Doping at the Olympic Games began to spread in the s and 60s as technological advancements in medicine allowed it, and as athletes began to realize the edge they could gain by using. Doping to enhance physical performance in competition was seen historically as something only acceptable in professional competition, doing whatever it takes to win regardless of the consequences. Amateurs using drugs however attacked the purity of the Olympic movement.
The Mexico City Games had other drawbacks than just a rise of rampant illicit drug use for performance enhancement. Athletes and researchers were concerned about the altitude of Mexico City , and it became apparent that change was going to be essential in allowing athletes to properly prepare for how the altitude change would affect their bodies. However, as researchers began to look further into the impact of altitude on training and red blood cells, they discovered a big difference between competing at low and high altitudes.
Researchers held pre-Olympic research events every year for the four years leading up to the games in Mexico City, using around athletes from more than 30 countries in their research. Ernst Joel, one of the doctors that conducted detailed experiments during these events, recommended to the IOC that athletes begin training at high altitude up to three months before the games in order to acclimate the body fully to the rigors of competition at such a high altitude.
People will tune in to watch athletes they know. The pro athletes are pre-sold to the public, which means increased viewership. Avery Brundage, the IOC president at the time, was faced with a new issue: the amount of time athletes trained for the Olympics. Four weeks of hard training and preparation before the Olympics was the amateur standard for years. Brundage and his predecessors believed an even playing field with amateur athletes meant a limit to the training allowed before competition.
Four weeks was a short enough period that it meant athletes were still considered amateurs by the IOC. It enabled them to work another job and meant no one country could use its resources to support athletes taking off work longer amounts of time.
For Brundage, his staunch belief in amateurism had to be preserved.
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