Track and field will become the first sport to receive direct cash payments for Olympic gold medals, the federation announced Wednesday.
For decades, the Olympics have promoted the ideal of amateurism. This tournament prided itself on being a tournament where elite athletes competed solely for the joy of representing their country.
Amateurism was touted as the best way to keep the sport clean, fair, and honest. “Professionalism” was looked down upon as vulgar and mercenary. However, over the past 30 years, the concept of amateurism in the Olympics has been fading away as professional athletes were allowed to participate.
World Athletics, the global governing body for track and field, plans to break new ground by making it easier to pay athletes. All individual gold medalists in the sport at this summer's Paris Games will receive $50,000. (The winning relay teams will share the prize money.) The federation has announced that the payments to silver and bronze medalists will be reduced starting in 2028.
Federation president Sebastian Coe, a two-time amateur gold medalist, called the decision “a pivotal moment for World Athletics and track and field as a whole, empowering athletes and recognizing their important role.” We would like to emphasize our efforts to do so.” Please contribute to the success of the Olympics. ”
Coe is seen as a leading candidate to become the next president of the International Olympic Committee, possibly paving the way for expanded payments to other sports.
For some athletes, prize money can be a big reward. “At first glance, $50,000 may not seem like a lot to an Olympic champion,” said Kyle Marber, a former elite miler and contributor to track and field news site Citius Mag. “But for many individuals who participate in non-premier events, perhaps competing for smaller countries, this money could go a long way.”
The ideal of amateurism, developed as a concept in the 19th century, was also a convenient way for the Olympics to exclude working-class athletes who could not afford to skip work to compete with the “gentlemen.”
In the 20th century, as professional leagues began to emerge around the world in many sports, the Olympics drew a hard line, disqualifying athletes who were tainted by accepting filthy benefits. Most infamously, it was discovered that American Jim Thorpe, considered the world's best athlete, had accepted a few dollars to play professional baseball several years earlier, and that he had earned it at the 1912 Olympics. He was stripped of the two gold medals he won. (This decision was not fully reversed until 2022.)
Amateurism was taken very seriously. A seemingly innocuous proposal to allow amateurs and professionals to compete in the same competitions was described in the New York Times in 1913 as a “radical plan.”
Ultimately, as the worldwide popularity of the Olympics grew, amateurism allowed the International Olympic Committee to benefit from virtually free labor and preserve as much of the billions of dollars in television revenue as possible. It is now possible.
Amateurism also gave the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries a significant advantage in international competition after World War II. There were nominally no professional athletes under the communist regime, so participants from these countries were able to compete in the Olympics in their 20s and 30s while earning a living as “coaches” and “teachers.” Ta. Athletes in the West often leave the sport after college to play professionally or take a formal job. Opponents of the system denounced it as “shamelessness.”
Strict amateurism rules began to be relaxed in the 1990s, as the Olympic Committee was keen to attract the world's best athletes to the Olympics. It was especially effective for players like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, who play basketball for the United States. However, although certain national federations often offered cash bonuses, newly arrived professional athletes were still not directly paid prize money for medals.
Amateurism is no longer the watchword of the Olympic movement. The word appears nowhere in the 112 pages of the current Olympic Charter. Olympic amateurism may be lost in history, just as athletes competed naked in the ancient Greek Olympics.
Scott Cacciola contributed reporting.