Golf Victory
How can “Golf” be an Olympic sport?
I always thought that the Olympics were for “amateurs”—NOT— “pros”?
Tiger Woods-is a “Pro” golfer.
Him saying that he would like to make golfing part of the Olympics,
would take away the true spirit of the games……like they took away
Jim Thorpe’s medals; for his 1912 Olympic victories in both the
pentathlon and the decathlon!!!!!
Ever since 1988-1992 the Olympics have been open to pros and not just amateurs. As mentioned above Basketball has pro players in the Olympics and it wasn’t just in 1992 when they allowed NBA players as pro European league players where allowed to play in earlier Olympic competitions.
Tennis was reinstated as an Olympic sport in 1988 and they allowed pros in fact the famous women’s tennis player Steffi Graf won the gold in Ladies singles and is only player to have won what is known as the golden slam as she won Australian, French, Wimbledon, US Open and Olympics.
Beijing 2008 Rafael Nadal won the men’s singles gold for Spain, Roger Federer won gold in doubles for Switzerland and Venus and Serena Williams won doubles gold for USA.
Professionals ever since 1984 or 88 have been allowed to play in the Olympic Football tournament. Most famous pro player in 2008 Olympic Football tournament was Messi who helped Argentina win gold medal.
Professionals also play Volleyball (yes around world there’s pro volleyball players) and Handball where it’s a pro sport in areas of Europe.
What happened to Jim Thorpe was a travesty of justice and a outrage and why the idea of amateurs in Olympics was a sham. Yous see ever since communist countries such as USSR and East Germany (GDR) started using full time government funded so called amateur athletes the whole idea was both a farce and a sham.
Amateur sports was created by elitist aristocrats who felt that playing sports for money was repugnant. In the Ancient Olympics the Greeks had no such distinction of what was a professional athlete and what was amateur.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/amat.html
Lastly Baron Pierre de Coubertin allowed professional fencers called masters to compete in the Olympic fencing tournament. Thus making Fencing a rare Olympic sport that had acknowledged pro’s competing in the Olympics prior to 1980′s.
http://www.olympic.org/uk/sports/programme/index_uk.asp?SportCode=FE