The Curse of the Shamateur

Abstract

On 8 August 1927, the Executive Committee of the IOC voted to award broken-time payments to amateur football players during the 1928 Amsterdam games. In the wake of the bitter fall-out from the Paris games, where scenes of nationalistic squabbling forced many in Britain to consider the nation's Olympic future, the Executive Committee's concession appeared to deliver a death knell to the British Olympic movement. Moving to defend the purity of British-style amateurism against the rising tide of veiled professionalism and ‘broken-time’ payments, BOA leaders again threatened a permanent British Olympic withdrawal.