Re: If the olympics were still amateur...
Some of the 1980 USA players played pro in the minors or Europe (Eruzione, Harrington, Verchota) before having their amateur status "restored" prior to the Lake Placid. And do we have to be reminded about the "amateur" Soviets, who trained 10 months a year together away from their families, got army salaries for no army duties, and got nice apartments and cars from the Soviet State?
The whole amateur thing was a sham from the beginning perpetrated by the rich euro Olympic Founders who didn't want to compete against tradesmen but against other rich gentlemen. (See the movie 'Chariots of Fire' for more on this). This forced many athletes into poverty. Give me pros anyday and remove the hypocrisy. Money for performance has been part of the Olympics since the very beginning. Even the ancient Greeks Olympians received huge prize packages for winning at the Ancient Olympics from their city-states.
Yeah, what Baron Pierre de Coubertin thought about the desireability of "amateurism" is hardly relevant over a century later. To be a world class athlete in anything is a full time job.
Alpine skiing was always chock a block with "shamateurism." On the eve of the '72 winter games, Avery Brundage of the IOC expelled the great Austrian downhiller Karl Schranz, who was making 6 figures as an "amateur." One year Italian Gustavo Toeni won the FIS competition as the best skiier in the world. At a news conference a reporter asked him what it meant and before the kid could answer, another reporter shouted out: "800 million Lira a year."
During the cold war the communist countries always compared our scholarship athletes with their "soldiers." The biggest difference was the lack of central control. The two most dominant big men of their era, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Bill Walton, did not play for the US in the Olympics. And no force could have required them to play. A similar scenario in a "workers paradise" is inconcievable. In hockey, the Soviets had about a million players in their system. All of whom were moved around at the whim of sports officials. At the top of that pyramid was an NHL-like league with teams like Spartak and Wings of the Soviet Army. The team we saw in the Olympics was an all star team from that league. One year, goalie Vladislav Tretiak entered the Olympics a "sergeant" and ended them a "captain."
Swami's point about the life styles of these athletes is dead on. During the Olympics I posted about an "up close and personal" segment ABC did years ago on the great Soviet gymnast Nelly Kim. She had her own apartment, a duplex, with her coach on the other level and drove an American car. She was living la dolce vita, Soviet style. You can imagine that any little problems she had with the bureauocracy were quickly and efficiently overcome. It was certainly a good deal for her.
Over the years totalitarian governments (Nazi Germany, the Sovet Republics) have labored hard to show the "superiority" of their systems based on the outcome of athletic competitions. The steroid scandals of the East German swim team are perhaps the worst example of this, given that many of those girls have suffered and are suffering as a result. These girls didn't volunteer to take the drugs and there was certainly no "informed consent" involved. Just a government employee ordering them to roll up their sleeves. Not to mention hard working swimmers from other countrys who were cheated out of medals (and only now are beginning to see the record corrected). And let's not forget the Press "sisters," Tamara and Irina, who were gold medal winning athletes, until the IOC established gender testing. The "girls" quickly retired.
No, we're much better off to have abandoned that quaint 19th century notion about "amateurs."