Professional Athletes in the Olympics

The debate over professional athletes competing in the Olympics seems to be one that comes up every time the countries of the world get together for the spectacular event.  Most of the discussion that I hear seems to revolve around the U.S. Men's Basketball team and how it is "unfair" that we use professional athletes to compete against other nations.  I personally think that this is one of the most ridiculous conversations ever to take place and I am baffled at the ignorance of some people to think that we (the U.S.) are the only country to do so.  I know that most people are smart enough to believe that other countries use professional athletes too, but the question always seems to come back to our Men's Basketball team. 

What I believe to be fueling this inquiry to the ethics of the Olympics is the notion that the U.S. Men's Basketball team dominates all of it's opponents.  This is clearly the case in most instances, particularly in their record breaking performance against Nigeria where they won the game by some 80+ points, more points than Nigeria even scored.  That was unbelievable and was an amazing performance.  Then in their next game they won a nail biter against Lithuania by a mere 5 points.  This goes to show that not all of their games are dominant performances, despite being the clear favorites in all of their games.  What some people may not know is that most, if not all of the other countries playing in the Men's Basketball Division, have at least one NBA player on their team.  Spain, Argentina and France have several in fact and these are not just bench players, they are start like Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Ronny Turiaf.  Ok, so that last one may not be a star, but he is certainly a hustle dork which can impact the game. 

My point is this...lay off the U.S. Men's Basketball team already for being fortunate enough to have a large pool of elite athletes at the game of basketball to pull from to form the best possible team to compete with at the Olympics.  If I am not mistaken, that is the "spirit of the Olympics", to put forth your best efforts.  This year there have been multiple athletes disqualified from competing in the Olympics for not trying their best and yet when the U.S. puts together a dominant force to reckon with, multiple years in a row, all of a sudden there is a question about if it is the right thing to do.  Of course it is ethical, anything less than one's best would just be a slap in the face to the other nations who want to play against the great players in the NBA.

As for the more general topic of "professional athletes" participating in the Olympics.  Good luck getting that to stop across the board with the various countries and events.  Most people know that NBA players make several millions of dollars to do what they love and know best.  What is less known is the amount of money other athletes earn for their respective sports.  Take Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki..."who?" you might be saying.  She is a tennis player who earned $13.7 million last year and is in the Olympics this year competing for her country.  Another tennis example who is a lot more famous, Roger Federer of Switzerland, earned a measly $54.3 million last year.  Both of these earnings were found on http://thechive.com/2012/08/06/the-20-highest-earning-athletes-of-the-2012-olympics-20-photos/ and were reported to be taken from Forbes list of money earned over the past 12 months. 

Another thing to think about are the athletes that make a living off of their endorsements.  Take Michael Phelps for example.  Arguably the greatest Olympian of all time.  Do you expect to find him working a 9-5 job when he is not competing?  Hell no!  He is likely in the pool training everyday of his life because he gets paid by Subway and other endorsements to do just that, get better at what he already has mastered so that their company can use him as a spokesperson to sell more sandwiches.  Other countries most certainly do the same.  Take China for example.  They won nearly all the diving gold medals, if not all of them, this year in the 2012 London Olympics.  I would be willing to bet that they have some sort of financial backer to allow them to spend the ungodly amount of time perfecting their sport to compete at such a high level, year in and year out. 

Lastly, the world does not want to see a bunch of "non-professional" athletes competing in events when they know that there are other, more skilled, people that would be more amazing to see.  As much fun as it would be to think that any average Joe, like myself, could compete on the world stage doing, let's say the long jump, I know that it would not be very entertaining.  No one wants to see anything but the best of the best competing and fortunately we live in a world where businesses and professional sporting associations have the means to pay these athletes enough money that they only have to worry about one thing...pushing themselves to their limits for the sake of entertaining the masses. 

Images taken from the following sites respectively: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/2012-usa-olympic-men's-basketball-team, http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/07/sport/olympics-five-things-to-watch/index.html, http://www.interaksyon.com/interaktv/olympic-tennis-roger-federer-survives-scare-in-first-round-match, http://ifitandhealthy.com/michael-phelps-smoking/, http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-08-02/london-2012-olympics-medals-table