by Nish Laverz

Created on: November 03, 2009

The Modern Olympic games has seen many changes since it started the acceptance of professionals being one of them.

When the modern Olympic games was started in 1896 it was created for amateur athletes to compete. The amateurism requirements were gradually fazed out from the 1970's.

The exclusion of professionals had caused controversy throughout the history of the modern Olympics. Jim Thorpe the 1912 Pentathlon and Decathlon Champion was striped of his medals when it came to light that he had played semi-professional baseball before he competed in the games, he was reinstated as champion in 1983. On another occasion swiss and Austrian skiers boycotted the winter games in1936 because their skiing teachers were not allowed to compete due to them being classed as professionals because they earned money from their sport.

At the 1992 the Americans entered the "Dream Team" into the Basket ball tournament who outclassed the other teams. This team consisted of some of the best American Basketball players of the time. This team had a major impact on the games and it was unfair on the other teams in the competition. They repeated this successful formula in the 1996 Atlanta games. By the time of the 2000 Sydney games American NBA was starting to be filled with international players and so more countries fielded superstar like teams and so the American's dominance of the sport was a little less.

Professional Athletes can now compete in most sports at the Olympic Games the only full exclusion is in boxing.

The addition of Professional Athletes into the Olympic teams has been a good and a bad thing in equal measure as it has allowed more people the chance to compete as some amateurs are as good at their sport as their professional team mates. But it has sometimes caused problems and an unfair disadvantage where the professionals of one country have totally out classed the amateurs of others. Their inclusion has created revenue for the host countries as when the Dream team played there was allot of interest in the basketball as people wanted to see them in action.

Their are still alot of amature athletes competing and I hope this will never change as it is good for sport in general to have. But as it can be hard for them to find the funding required even with the state funding available in most countries professionals may find it easier to get there to compete.

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