‘If the IOC Finds Out about This, All of You Will Be Declared Professionals’: The Professionalization of Finnish Track Athletes from the 1960s to 1980s

Abstract

For most of the twentieth century a characteristic feature of international athletics was the association of ‘shamateurism’ with elite athletes. The amateur rules of the International Olympic Committee and the International Association of Athletics Federations ushered professionally motivated athletes towards under-the-table payments of gate and sponsor money, ostensible jobs, and tax avoidance. After the deterioration of Olympic amateurism in the 1970s and 1980s, professionalism was finally accepted at the turn of the 1990s. This paper contributes to the understanding of the professionalization of athletics by tracing career paths of Finnish athletes in the last decades of the amateur age. Taking some of the most successful Finnish athletes in the 1970s and 1980s as case studies, the underlying mechanics of Finnish sports system are analyzed with source material that reflects the perspective of athletes. Some athletes adroitly seized on the opportunities that the underground culture presented and gained both full-time training conditions and financial profits, whereas others remained nearly genuine amateurs. A watershed moment was the establishment of trust funds in 1983, after which the culture of shamateurism gradually fell apart. New revenue streams also created ways for Finnish women to become fully professional track athletes.