Matthew P. Llewellyn

For decades, amateurism-defined the ideals undetgirding the Olympic movement. No more. Today's Games present athletes who enjoy open corporate sponsorship and unabashedly compete for lucrative commercial endorsements. Matthew P. Llewellyn and John Cleaves analyze how this astonishing transformation mostra altro took place. Using Olympic archives and a wealth of research across media, the authors examine how an elite of white, wealthy, often Anglo-Saxon men controlled and shaped the enormously powerful myth of amateurism The myth assumed an air of naturalness that made It seem unassailable and, not incidentally, served those in power. The authors trace professionalism's inroads into the Olympics from tragic figures like Jim Thorpe through the shamateur era of under-the-table cash and state-supported athletes. As they show, the increasing acceptability of professionals went hand-in-hand with the Games becoming a for-profit International spectacle. Yet the myth of amateurism's purity remained a potent force, Influencing how people around the globe imagined and understood sport. Timely and vivid with details. The Rue and Fall of Olympic Amateurism is the first book-length examination of the movement's foundational Ideal. mostra meno