Throwing Matches at the Olympics

[Tristan Lall]

Writing in the Toronto Star, Cathal Kelly makes an interesting argument: that the moral imperatives present in amateur sport (like the Olympics) are different from those in professional sport.

Originally Posted by Cathal Kelly

Four teams, including the defending world champions, were tossed from the badminton competition for the sin of playing the long game instead of the short one.

Originally Posted by Cathal Kelly

Professional athletes owe you their best every night. That’s what they’re getting paid to do. Amateurs owe nothing to the crowd. This isn’t a circus. They’re not getting a cut of the gate.

Amateurs are here to represent their country and win medals. The national federations that pay their subsistence wage are their bosses. They don’t care how good you look. They don’t care how hard you tried. They care how much you win. Public sports funding isn’t charity. It’s an extension of a nation’s foreign policy objectives.

It's basically realpolitik in sports.

Does Kelly's thesis hold true for FRC, or are the backers of FRC teams genuinely interested in the short game, even at the expense of the long one?