Athletics’ new age set to run

Press, 24 May 1985, Page 32

Athletics’ new age set to run

NZPA-Reuter London

The cream of the world’s athletes, competing openly for prize-money for the first time, will introduce a new age in athletics when the inaugural grand prix series begins this week-end in San Jose, California.

Already the 1980 s have seen remarkable changes in athletics.

In the past three years the sport’s governing body, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (1.A.A.F.), has introduced a world championships, a world indoor games and approved the payment of appearance money at selected meetings. Now this year leading athletes will be entitled to prize-money totalling more than $l.l million at 16 grand prix meetings in the United States and Europe. Although various small professional circuits have appeared briefly over the years, the showpiece of athletics has always been the Olympic Games, dedicated as they are to the amateur ideal.

But the Olympic vision of golden youth competing for glory alone has become irretrievably lost and since World War II the increasing pressures on athletes have resulted in the amateur regulations being flouted with cynical impudence. The state-supported athletes of Eastern Europe and

their American counterparts, financed by university athletics scholarships, are effectively full-time professionals and under-the-counter payments have proliferated at meetings throughout the world.

In fact the chief reason the American-organised International Track Association professional circuit foundered nine years ago was its inability to recruit top names, who were all earning far more in “amateur” competitions.

The payment of prize and appearance money has effectively removed this hypocrisy, although the I.A.A.F. still resorts to some convoluted sentence constructions to avoid using the dreaded word professional. The man who symbolises

the modern commercial athlete best is inevitably the United States’ quadruple Olympic champion, Carl Lewis.

Lewis, who competes in the 100 m and 200 m at this week-end's Bruce Jenner Classic is a marketing dream — intelligent, articulate and the most gifted athlete of his generation. He will be joined at San Jose by a glittering array of athletes, including the American triple Olympic champion, Valerie BriscoHooks, and Czechoslovakia’s 400 m and 800 m world champion and record-holder, Jarmila Kratochvilova.

As Lewis lines up at the Bruce Jenner Classic, he may well sense the ghost of his childhood idol, Jesse Owens, at his elbow. Exactly 50 years ago tomorrow Owens astounded the world when he shattered six world records in 45 minutes, an achievement unlikely to be remotely approached. But even six world bests and four gold medals did not guarantee a living for a black American in the 1930 s and Owens, the greatest sprinter and long jumper of his era, was reduced to racing race horses for money.

By contrast, athletics has been Lewis’ entree to the promised land. He is already rich beyond the expectations of athletes of Owens’ generation and, as he and his peers vie for fame and money over the next three-and-a-half months, the I.A.A.F. president, Primo Nebiolo's, ambitious dream of seeing athletics become the world’s premier sport should come a step closer.