The Money or the Glory? I’ll take the...

I always turn to the sports pages of my newspaper first. Perhaps I delay reading about politics, money-making and violent crimes until I have been uplifted by the purity of athletic endeavour. Which just goes to show how I cling to naivety. Because, more and more, the sports pages are more about money than sport.   

   I’m soft on nostalgia too. The excitement and colour of the Commonwealth Games. All those wonderful athletes marching around the track, eyes shining with the pride of representing their country. For, no matter what the competition may hold in store, this is the hour of glory they have dreamed of.

    So much for nostalgia. Probably since the 1974 Games in Christchurch, (which I loved) the Commonwealth Games began losing its lustre. Commerce had come to stay. Glory was all very well but it didn’t have the allure of money in the bank. 

   Last Sunday Morning when I took out the sports section of the Sunday Star Times, I read about Kimberly Smith, a high performance marathon runner and a serious medal prospect. Alas, unlikely to compete in the games because her agent advised against Deli’s pollution and security. 

   Agent! Pollution! How pathetic that the world’s fittest physical specimens are being advised to use this as an excuse for spurning an invitation to the best that India has to offer. Safety is something else. No one in their right mind would encourage athletes to take a chance on terrorists. If only that were the primary reason for turning down the invitation. 

   Smith is quoted as saying, “It’s just really bad timing with the Commonwealth Games being in October when all the marathons start.” The article went on to say Smith would like to run a marathon in New York, Chicago or Berlin. Unlike Deli, which offers only glory, these are lucrative events for top athletes.  

   For all I know Kimberly Smith is wonderfully unselfish and wildly patriotic, and I look forward to following her progress. However, because she is a child of the professional sports era, she would be dumfounded by my disappointment at her reaction. Our generational attitudes to sport cannot be reconciled.  

   Yet my reaction to Carl Hayman, the ex All Black, taking the money from a French club rather than returning to represent New Zealand, was quite different. Perhaps my understanding of professionalism in Rugby is more developed. Players get knocked about then realise they’d better sell their services to the highest bidder before they get laid up. Fair enough. But in the dream time of my youth I never saw rugby players parading on a Commonwealth Games athletic track.

   So, I need to get up with the play. Carl Hayman and Kimberly Smith represent modern sport. So does renowned kayaker Ben Fouhy, who baulked at competing in national trials with lesser mortals because it didn’t suit his programme. It seems he may now be funded by Sport & Recreation New Zealand to run his own programme. This is where everyone else needs to get up with the play. 

   If athletes want to be treated as professionals they should not expect taxpayers to fund their lifestyle. They should pay their own way. Perhaps then the 70 million dollars that Sport & Recreation New Zealand spends could be devoted entirely to genuinely amateur sport.