Money-worship in the Olympic movement

The revelations of bribery provide a good opportunity for putting a scalpel into the root cause of corruption. A radically new way of administering the International Olympic Committee (IOC) must be sought.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, who became IOC president in 1980, played a large part in establishing and promoting a commercializing trend. He adopted a policy that allowed the participation of professional athletes, throwing amateurism overboard, while firming up mechanisms for recruiting sponsors on a global basis. These were bold turns toward commercialism.

Mikio Oda, Japan's first Olympic gold medal winner who died last year, used to say: "We must take back power from those who make money out of the Olympics. Real athletes must join hands to rebuild the Olympic Games as soon as possible."

The money-worshiping introduced to the Olympic Games by the Samaranch regime must be eradicated.

The ancient Olympic Games began a pattern of commercialized victory after winners began to take home prize money and privileges. The Games subsequently went into decline because of corruption. Will the modern Olympics follow the same path as the ancient Olympics?

-- The Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo