PADDOCK DENOUNCES AMATEUR SPORT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18889, 12 October 1929, Page 30 (Supplement)

PADDOCK DENOUNCES AMATEUR SPORT.

“ GAME OVERSHADOWED BY STAKES OF VICTORY." NEW YORK. August 15 Charles Paddock, erstwhile “fastest human ’* and for many years the stormy petrel of track athletics, soon may join Ray Barbuti on the suspended list of the Amateur Athletic Union. Barbuti, who won the 400 metres Olympic championship, on his return to America made certain allegations against the A.A.U., which promptly

suspended him and asked him to support the charges he had made at a hearing called by the registration committee of the Metropolitan association of that body, and when he failed to do so his name was continued on the suspended list. Paddock’s charges against the AA..U., which appear in a magazine article, contain similar material and have so aroused that organisation that Avery Brundage, its president, has taken up the case.

Under the caption, “No Son of Mine,” Paddock, who is unmarried, tells readers that he will guard his as yet ethereal offspring from the petty and penurious evils which surround the amateur champion. He goes on to recite those evils, using, as do most critics of the A.A.U., the overworked “Mr Blank ” as the guilty party in certain alleged unamateur practices.

But finally he strikes out more boldly to charge A-A.U. officials with an attempt to use him as a gate attraction in their effort to swell the coffers of the American Olympic Committee and, at the same time, prevent him from winning a place in the 1928 Olympic team. Among other items he implies unfair arranging of heats in the 100 metre

dash in the final Olympic try-outs at the Harvard Stadium that year. The following is an extract from Paddock’s article: —lf I am ever so fortunate to have a son, I hope that he will be interested in athletics, and if he is good enough to play professionally, I shall not stand in his way. However, I shall earnestly try to keep him from being exposed to the petty and penurious evils which surround the amateur champion to-day. For I want him to be honest in his sport relations, which at present is something virtually impossible in amateur championship competition. Because consciously or unconsciously the “ Simon pure ” amateur who is a box-office attraction, cashes in upon his name. All of us do it, in a greater or lesser degree, and anyone who follows sport closely realises that this is true. There are varying degrees of professionalism, to be sure, from the athlete who “ takes it behind the back ” for running a race, to the bright boy who gains entree to the office of his client by the glamour of the name that he has gained through “ amateur ” competition. . . . Very

often the Amateur Athletic Union officials have no knowledge of what is taking place. Under the present constitution there is no adequate way to remedy the evil, and some people are inclined to believe that no law even can prevent the promoter from conniving with the athlete. ... If you think that the boy in a championship football team, or the amateur title-holder in track, is in the game for the sheer fun of it, you are wrong, because it ceases to be pleasure when you sweat three hours a day three months of the year, working overtime in your studies in order to continue on the gridiron. In every big sport it is the same thing. The sheer love of the game is overshadowed by stakes of victory that are continually being flaunted in your face. . . . I have waited almost a year to write this article. Perhaps I should have waited two years and then not written it. But Ido feel that I can sit down now without prejudice and present a cross-section of amateur athletic conditions as I have found them.

Scotland’s New Rugby President. Doyen of Scottish county clerks and secretary of the Association of County Clerks in Scotland, the new president of the Scottish Rugby Union, Sir A. G. G. Asher, is by way of being a public man in Scotland. He was an Oxford triple “blue”—Rugby, cricket, and athletics—and a half-back of international repute. He has acted as cap tain of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers and as president of the Scottish Amateur Athletic Association and the Scottish Cricket Union. The new vice-president, Dr Andrew Balfour, has found even a wider fame A Watsonian forward, he played for Scotland against England in 1896 and 1897 and a few years later he went to the South African war as a civil surgeon. During the Great War he filled various high administrative posts in Mesopotamia and elsewhere, and he has written books on public health and other medical subjects. He is director 1 of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. • His first work of fiction, “By Stroke of Sword,” made him a popular writer of romance Truly he is a many-sided man.