Focus on Atlanta

Allowing professional athletes -- non-amateurs -- to compete in the Olympic Games is a practice that, to many people, is against the true spirit of the Modern Olympic Movement as initiated by Baron Pierre de Coubertin 100 years ago. The debate over the issue prevailed during the last three games. Now that restriction seems to be loosening. In the present Atlanta Games, professional baseball players are allowed to compete in the Games.

Even so, an old proverb inherited from those initial days a century ago when sports were purely contested among amateurs -- the motto citius, altius, fortius (faster, higher, stronger) -- continues to stand to this day, when the 26th Olympic Games, the world largest sports gathering to date, begins in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

By 1984, when Los Angeles hosted the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had already scrapped the clause in 1981 in the Olympic Charter, which barred professional athletes from taking part in the Games. Probably not everybody in the Olympic Movement was happy with the move. There are many who still want to maintain the old Olympic ideals, established when gallantry and "true" sportsmanship reigned. At that time, it was not just the grabbing of gold medals that was important, but rather the participation, even in such major world events as the Olympic Games.

Organizing a sport event of this magnitude indeed requires professionalism, since billions of dollars are involved and profiting from it is what every host country wants to do. Since Juan Antonio Samaranch took over the helm of the IOC 16 years ago from Avery Brundage, the trend towards commercialism and professionalism has intensified. The Olympic Movement has earned millions of dollars during last three Olympic Games, beginning in Los Angeles and continuing at Seoul in 1988 and Barcelona four years later.

Athens, which hosted the first modern Olympic Games, only saw 12 countries participating. Their athletes competed in only nine sports. Now, a century later, about 10,800 male and female athletes from 197 countries from all parts of the world have poured into Atlanta to try to get one or two from the 1,993 gold medals on offer. Some three billion television viewers are expected to be watching the event.

The number of sports contested has increased with each Olympics, and Atlanta is no exception. Softball, beach volleyball and mountain biking are making their debut in the Games, albeit only as disciplines of existing sports on the Games program. Although, for as long as the Olympic Movement has existed, eyebrows have been raised at the inclusion of what are considered to be unusual events.

For the organizers, such additions in sports contested sometimes backfires, as the ever-growing number of competing athletes causes many headaches for the host country. This is also happening now in Atlanta. For example, athletes who have just arrived after hours of flying from their respective countries of origin were kept waiting for hours before they could get out of the airport. They had to spend some more punishing hours looking after their affairs when entering the Olympic Village.

Drug abuse has also marred many Olympic Games, causing a French expert on performance-enhancing drugs to call the International Olympic Committee "hypocritical". The French expert predicted that anabolic steroids, growth hormones and other drugs would be the stars of this summer's Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Today, said Dr. Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, the control of substance abuse is a farce. The athletes, according to the doctor, are always advised beforehand and that is why hardly any of them are ever caught.

Indeed, over the past 28 years the IOC has carried out 14,225 tests and only 51 athletes have been caught violating the rules in this particular area. According to Olympic authorities, only 0.36 percent of athletes use drugs. Hence, the allegation that the IOC is being hypocritical and cynical.

Nevertheless, all this notwithstanding, we believe that the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement remains -- today perhaps more than ever -- an important means for sowing greater understanding and goodwill among nations. We hope the Atlanta Games will be successful in this respect, as much as in taking sports to ever-higher levels of perfection.