Amateur versus pro: the debate

Public finds it difficult to separate the two, suggests former world champion

Don Fennell, Sports Editor

The life of an amateur athlete is notably different than their professional peers.

And nowhere is this fact more pronounced than when it comes to funding. Any successful or popular professional player or team almost always has plenty of sponsorship opportunities to choose from, but the athlete or team on the way up struggles to get any support at all.

"The public worships, reveres and idolizes pro sport but seldom thinks about amateur sport and knows very little about it," suggests Richmond sport administrator and parent Lawrie Johns.

"Pro sport is all about audiences, autographs and adulation while amateur sport is all about anonymity."

Johns says while pro athletes have a union, amateur athletes are basically welfare recipients depending on limited government handouts. He says the corporate community, with some notable exceptions, all but ignores amateur sport.

And so amateur athletesswimmers, rowers, figure skaters and gymnasts among themtrain in relative obscurity hoping to one day be good enough to compete for their country or to make it to the pros.

Johns says as a society we need to learn to differentiate between pro and amateur. There isn't as wide a gap in the abilities of the participants as is often perceived, he suggests. Amateurs may be athletes hoping one day to become pros, but they also may already be the world's best athletes competing anonymously.

"The competition is great and the skill phenomenal but the public has not yet been trained to appreciate that," he says.

This division between pro and amateur is more pronounced in North America than elsewhere in the world, Johns says. But while Canadians and Americans share a passion for pro sports, Americans also value high school and college sports much more than we do. Friday is traditionally high school sports day in the United States, Saturday the day college sports are highlighted, with Sunday the day pro sports are in the spotlight.

And high school and, particularly, college sports is every bit as big as pro. Colleges, where most of the amateur athletes reside, often have facilities that would be the envy of many here and sometimes stadiums seating in excess of 50,000 people.

"You can find that tradition in almost every community (in the United States)," Johns says. "(But) our culture does not support athletics as an integral part of our fabric.

"We only follow sports, and most of those are pro or related to a single eventthe Olympics for example," he says. "We as a country value sport the least of most developed and some under-developed countries. Again, the factor of pro sports is most crucial."

Swimmer Walter Wu, a record-setter at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta, believes sport is part of our culture but that we are overwhelmed by the media's coverage of the pros.

"We are bombarded by the pros," he says. "And I can understand some of the public perception. When you hear story after story about pro athletes sometimes people lump all athletes into one."

Wu points to the coverage of the NHL Vancouver Canucks as an example. He says almost daily, even when the Canucks aren't playing, they are the story.

But he suggests event though we're known as a hockey-mad city as many as half of the fans are bandwagon jumpers.

"They're only supporting the team because it's the cool thing to do, not because they actually like it."

Only when it's in vogue does amateur sport get that kind of intense following, and then it's usually only the Olympic Games. Even the world championships don't get that kind of support, he says.

But Wu doesn't blame the media. He says they are simply reacting to what the public wants.

Still, it saddens him. A world champion multiple times in his career, the Richmond man deserves the same kind of recognition as any pro athlete. But unless you're a hockey player in Canada few seem to be aware or care.

Wu finds it ironic that his accomplishments are more admired south of the 49th parallel than north of it. He says the same is true of other Canadian Olympians.

"I bet most people couldn't name who won gold in Nagano and have forgotten about Miriam Bedard's two golds in 1994," he says. "Yet they can tell you who scored the winning goal in the 1972 Summit (hockey) series, even those who weren't alive.

"Daniel Igali (who won the gold medal in wrestling at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia) was the big story of 2000 yet he still walks around in basic obscurity after all the media attention died off."

Wu says becoming an Olympic medalist is as difficult as making it to the NHL, but the rewards are often significantly different. After the initial media frenzy the Olympian returns to live in relative obscurity, yet the hockey player gets the adulation.

"It's ironic because the chances of meeting a person who went to the Olympics is far greater than that of meeting a pro," he says.

"The only people who watch amateurs are either ex-athletes or the families and friends. Seldom do you here the public say `Hey there's a championship on, let's go watch' whereas in Europe tons come out to watch because it's a sporting endeavour."

Unless the media makes it a priority to cover more amateur sports, the trend is going to continue, Wu suggests.

Wu is going to Los Angeles next month to star in a Home Depot commercial for the Olympics, which is being broadcast both in Canada and the United States. He says it's going to be interesting to see the reaction.

—Coming up next Thursday: The child as an athlete.