INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

symbolic persons of this debate (Avery Brundage and Karl Schranz)
were attacked.
AB: “There was never anything more comic in Austria, the
country of comic opera, than the ridiculous reception of the young
man who had been violating for a dozen years all amateur and
Olympic sport principles by making his living as an undignified
human advertisement for skis.” 48
L’Equipe made fun of the age (84) of the President of the I.O.C.,
trying to show as obvious the fact he had an outdated vision of
society.
By strongly stigmatising these people, the two sides removed any
legitimacy to them. They discredited their beliefs without actually
criticising their speeches 49 . It would have been possible to obtain the
same results by comparing the speeches of the Eastern European
countries with those of the countries of the West, 50 the first taking
support on the Marxism-Leninism 51 , the second on the basis of the
liberalism 52 .
“In the broad context of cold war ideology, the Olympic success of
the Soviet Union, and later of the East bloc countries, demanded
popular U.S. conventions of distinction between “our athletes”
and “theirs” […] The amateur/professional dichotomy was bent to
a new political purpose.” 53
Consequently one better understands why the problem of
amateurism was never solved. With such a vague concept, lying at the
centre of important issues and considering the number of countries
and cultures involved in the Olympic Movement, to find a consensus
on the subject, each camp being placed, of course, on what he felt to
be the morally right, was impossible.
IV. Conclusion
From the very beginning of the modern Olympic Games, it
appears that amateurism was used, by Pierre de Coubertin, as a means
to achieve other goals. This problem remained throughout the
development of the Olympic Movement, and an acceptable solution
was never found. 1972, with the disqualification of Karl Schranz and
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