Let the best man win! That is the keynote of true American sportsmanship — but does it always work out that way? For a long time I have been thinking that the so-called professional athlete has not been getting a square deal.

I should like to see professional athletes and professional players in every sport admitted to some contests now open only to those of amateur standing.

In golf, open championship matches are held where professionals and amateurs compete with each other. This is also true of flying. Why should it not be true of tennis, swimming, running, or any of the other sports?

Once every four years occur the Olympic Games. Thousands of dollars are expended in gathering together and financing the various teams.

Thousands of dollars are handed out by sports lovers who believe they will see the best in the world in each event, as has been promised them.

But is all this honest?

It does not seem to me that the hundreds of young men and women who are finally sent to the Olympics to bring home the title of World Champion really get the chance they are seeking, or that those who win are always entitled to the honors bestowed upon them, or that the sports lovers really get their money's worth. Watching the past Olympic show, this thought must have occurred to many, as it did to me.

Flying my own plane from the east coast I journeyed to Los Angeles last summer to watch the games. For two weeks I was one little speck in the multitude. With that multitude I laughed, cheered — almost wept — as the pageant of speed and grit and brawn unfolded. It was a spectacle unforgettable. A contest admirably conducted.

But it seemed to me that a gigantic dollar sign hung over the field of activity, barring many of the world's greatest athletes from the competition and stifling the spirit of the Olympic Games.

We, as spectators, came to see the man who could put the shot farthest, run fastest, dive most gracefully. Unless the world's finest are permitted to compete, some of the zest is gone.

Either the Olympics offer us world champions or they do not. As the games are conducted today and have been conducted in the past, many of the swiftest, the strongest, the most skillful athletes are not allowed to compete because they are considered "professionals." And their plight promises to be even more difficult in the future. The line drawn between the amateur and the professional is of necessity a very fuzzy one and is growing fuzzier. Often, I'm sure, the demarcation is so obscure the officials themselves can't know, and certainly the public doesn't care. In many cases these technicalities seem absurd. If some of them could be abolished, considerable heartache and hard feeling would be eliminated.

As matters stand now, the man who happens to support himself from athletics is barred from the Olympics. Among the spectators may be the man who really deserves one of the titles of world's champion. Because he is making his living teaching athletics he cannot compete. Yet what is more natural or sensible than that a man should choose his profession in the field to which he is best suited?

I realize, of course, that once the differentiation between amateur and professional was for the protection of the amateur. It was argued a man who played golf for a living could practice more than the one who made his by other means, and was therefore too keen a competitor. Time has completely altered this situation, and it is now the tennis and golf amateurs who spend the greater number of hours at their respective games while most professionals are too busy instructing to perfect themselves.

To point the case more clearly, I am going to repeat here a recent conversation that I had with one of the stars in last summer's Olympics, a winner of several running events. This young man said to me:

"Four years from now I hope still to be running. I think I'll be as good then as I am today. But even if I'm better, I won't be able to compete in the Olympics again."

I asked him why not.

"Because I have to make a living," he answered. "I can get a good job as an athletic instructor — the thing I know most about. But if I do it will bar me from amateur competition. Of course, I could teach dentistry or be a plumber — at neither of which I'm any good or could make so much money as at coaching. But those employments at least would leave me still an amateur."

From several other contestants I heard much the same story. It is the old problem of whether or not a hero in athletics stigmatizes his achievement, cheapens his victory, knocks his halo awry when he turns his special talents and ability into a means of livelihood.

It is honest bread and butter that they earn and I cannot see how they are sullying the good name of sports.

What difference should it make whether a girl diver earns her living as a secretary or teaches other girls swimming? Why should the runner who must make a living and chooses to make it coaching college boys on the track actually be expelled from international competition?

It does not seem to me even human to ask the athletes to give us gamely the splendid performances they do at the cost of personal sacrifices about which we know nothing and are not even interested in. These boys and girls are not mere trained robots, but human beings.

Unfortunately there has been a certain tendency on the part of the public to consider "professional" synonymous with "crooked." Yet there are few who realize the elasticity of that word "professional." An athlete can suddenly find himself in the professional class without realizing that he has put himself there. You become a professional if you accept any compensation whatsoever connected with athletics — no matter how legitimate the activity may be.

I have in mind the suspension from the amateur ranks of Tilden, a really great tennis player, who described for a newspaper syndicate a Davis Cup series in which he was playing. Tilden has spent years learning all there is to know about tennis, he has put his heart and soul into a study of the game. Then why shouldn't he benefit without interruption from that experience and knowledge?

You have doubtless seen the series of motion pictures that Bobby Jones made, showing how certain golf shots are played. Those pictures were both educational and interesting. Naturally Jones was paid for making them.

Sports officials called it "teaching" the game, and Bobby Jones could not have competed longer, had he wished to, in amateur tournaments.

If it happened that tennis and golf were sports included in the program of Olympic Games, don't you think that Tilden and Jones should be allowed to take part if they wished to qualify? Shouldn't you, as a spectator, feel slighted if you couldn't watch them play? After all, there's no internal difference between a man who plays for fun and one who plays for reward. Nor does an individual change his character overnight. To believe that all professional sporting events are crooked is as ridiculous as to insist that all amateur athletics are straight.

Recently in Hollywood there was made a motion picture called All American. In it the eleven members of last year's all-American team played parts, and by playing them their amateur standing terminates.

According to the Pacific Coast Conference rules, local collegians may work as extras in motion pictures, receive the modest wages of extras, and still remain amateurs. However, if they are paid more than the prevailing rate (just now ten dollars a day), they are considered as capitalizing their athletic prowess and are branded "professionals." Or if they allow their names to be used in connection with the motion picture, they again slip over the mysterious borderline and are no longer amateurs.

It is said that some athletes who work in motion pictures have very large expense accounts. How true this is I do not know. If whispered comments can be believed, it was a similar action that barred the great Nurmi, that incomparable runner, from further amateur competition. Nurmi came to official grief because of excessive personal expenditures while on a European amateur athletic trip.

I do not condone Nurmi's act. I do feel that the regulations which make such situations possible are not right.

Remember Jim Thorpe?

Back in 1912 he won the decathlon at Stockholm with an amazing score. Among the many prizes that came to him were a magnificent jeweled cup from the Czar of Russia and a valuable token from the King of England. All of these prizes were taken away from Thorpe. Today they are reposing in the Olympic headquarters in Sweden. Why?

Two years after Thorpe's triumph somebody unearthed the fact that as a boy he had played two games of semiprofessional baseball in North Carolina. For this the officials stripped Thorpe of his honors and offered them to the winner of second place. And he, a true sportsman, refused to accept them. "They belong," he insisted, "to the greatest athlete of all time. He won them, not I."

Last summer Jim Thorpe was in Los Angeles, wanting to see the Olympic Games. But he didn't have the price of a ticket. By chance, a newspaper man discovered his plight and pulled strings to have him admitted to the games. It is not inconceivable that in the course of his misfortunes the monetary value alone of those prizes might somehow have proved a godsend to his family and himself when hard luck came their way.

SOME say the sport-loving public is not so interested in professional contests. It has never stayed away from baseball when well played. Nor has professionalism detracted from the popularity and interest in my own sport, flying. Most flying in this country is frankly professional — yet that fact didn't keep the crowds away from the recent National Air Races at Cleveland.

Speaking of aviation (I usually am), one of the greatest exploits of sportsmanship, nerve, and skill had a $25,000 prize as its incentive. Yet that fact did not detract one whit from the glory heaped upon the flyer, nor from the world-wide interest in his accomplishment.

In the last Olympic Games, in many of the equestrian events, army officers figured prominently. In fact, the Prix des Nations was won by a foreign cavalry officer.

With cavalry officers, horsemanship is obviously a profession. They earn money riding and teaching. As professionals they should be barred from Olympic competition, just as the track coach of a Middle Western college is barred. Why they are not barred I don't know.

Consider shooting. According to the ruling of the international Federation de Tir, no one who has ever accepted "compensation or material reward" for shooting firearms is eligible in the Olympics. Thus some of the most outstanding marksmen in the world — military men, policemen, and others — are cut off from amateur competition.

Thus the cavalry officer who teaches riding for a living may ride at the Olympics, but the army officer who teaches marksmanship for a living is barred.

Isn't it rather ridiculous?

Nor does there seem to be any real hope that these conditions will improve in the near future. There are sixteen forms of sport represented at the Olympic Games. Each of these is presided over by a different governing committee — which means sixteen separate committees and sixteen different sets of rules. Uniformity of rules, and one governing body that would draw, bold and clear, the line that separates the professional from the amateur, and administer at all times justice tempered with common sense, could simplify matters. As it stands now, these sixteen committees are governed by a pretty unspecific protocol laid down by the International Olympic Committee.

In turn, the affairs of each competing team are handled by a special committee of the country they represent. The amount of money placed at the disposal of a given team, prior to and during the games, varies according to the affluence of the particular country.

The American Olympic Committee provided the American team with a fund of $350,000 gained from the sale of buttons and from gate receipts at track meets. Out of this fund were paid the expenses of the athletes who made the final tryouts. The modest charge of two dollars a day for board and local transportation was made.

I imagine the American team led the others in the matter of funds — yet one of the finest displays of sportsmanship in this year's Olympics came from a country modestly represented financially.

I refer to the magnificent performance of Alberto Cardossa, a Brazilian marine.

In the 10,000-meter race he finished last. We who saw him run wondered why he was so sluggish from the start. Yet minutes after all the other runners had left the track, Cardossa plodded across the finishing line. His indomitable spirit, which shone in his face, captured the crowd. It was not until after the race that the story of the difficulties of the Brazilian team, and Cardossa in especial, became known.

Cardossa was on the Brazilian ship which brought the athletes to San Francisco. When they tried to charge their harbor fees to their government, as is the custom, they found that they had no government; it had changed since they sailed from home. They had relied on the sale of 50,000 bags of coffee which they had brought with them. But when their ship was held for nonpayment of harbor fees, the coffee was held with it. Some of the Brazilian athletes had money of their own. Cardossa had no money. But he had spirit and grit.

So the Brazilian boy began walking to Los Angeles, hitching rides, but walking most of the way. I was told he arrived at the stadium only ten minutes before the 10,000-meter race started. He ran the race he had come to run — and he finished it!

It is incidents like this one which preserve the spirit of the ancient games. After such an amazing display of grit, would anyone fairly object if Cardossa had earned the money to come to the Olympics — even though he had earned it teaching track technique?

"Let the best man win!"

That, it seems to me, should be the slogan of future Olympics.

Publication Date: December 3, 1932