Drawing of Charley Paddock from Wide World photograph by C. M. Sexton

by Charley Paddock

"I trust that no son of mine

  will ever be an amateur Champion,"

briefly expresses this veteran sprinter's views

on unprofessional sport. 

"It's not on the right track," he says    

I have waited almost a year to write this article.  Perhaps I should have waited two years and then not written it.  But I do feel that I can sit down now without prejudice and present a cross-section of amateur athletic conditions as I have found them.  At the outset, allow me to say this -- that I am a sincere believer in the benefits which may be derived both mentally and physically from recreational sports.

If I am ever so fortunate as to have a son, I hope that he will be interested in athletics, and if he is good enough to play professionally, I shall not stand in his way.  However, I shall earnestly try to keep him from being exposed to the petty and penurious evils which surround the amateur champion today.

For I want him to be honest in his sport relations, which at present is something virtually impossible in amateur championship competition.  Because consciously or unconsciously the "Simon pure" amateur who is a box-office attraction, cashes in upon his name.

All of us do it, in a greater or lesser degree, and anyone who follows sport closely realizes that this is true.  There are varying degrees of professionalism, to be sure, from the athlete who "takes it behind his back" for running a race, to the bright boy who gains entree to the office of his client by the glamour of the name that he has gained through "amateur" competition.

To the uninitiated, it might be explained that virtually every runner who has won enough prestige in his favorite event to attract public interest has his "price."  But he is not so much at fault as the promoter who stages the meet in which he is a competitor.

STRICTLY BETWEEN GENTLEMEN

To illustrate what I mean, let us take the case of Mr. Blank, who for one reason or another wants to hold an athletic meet either for his own or someone else's benefit.  He invites school, college and club athletes to take part in a series of events for which he offers prizes and the opportunity to gain additional glory.  Though Mr. Blank generally succeeds in interesting the athletes, their presence has not aroused the enthusiasm of the public.  In order to do this, it is necessary that Mr. Blank procure one or two nationally or internationally known champions who have the "color" that will draw the people through the turnstiles.

So Mr. Blank goes to the champion whom he thinks is the best bet and offers him a comparatively small "gift," in proportion to his box-office value, to compete in the meet.  The "gift" is generally handed to the athlete or to the athlete's representative by Mr. Blank or Mr. Blank's trusted henchman a few minutes before the games begin.  The transaction is strictly between two gentlemen.  There is no writing of any kind nor any checks and, unless both the promoter and the athlete confess, there exists no proof the Amateur Athletic Union  (A. A. U. ) can use for the purpose of professionalizing the athlete or of barring the promoter.

Sometimes the amateur champion has but recently attained his position of popularity and is ignorant about how affairs of this kind are conducted, in which event he proves an easy mark for the promoter.  The newcomer generally learns very rapidly and soon finds himself where he can dictate terms.

Fortunately for the promoter, by the time this occurs, another athlete has arisen to take the old star's place.  Sometimes a veteran stays good for a long period and when this occurs and the public is still interested in him, the promoter find himself in a delicate position where he may be forced to give the attraction the amount that he is actually worth.

Even then, the promoter generally manages to get the best of the deal, for though he agrees to pay the athlete $2,000 or even $3,000 for a single night's competition, when the hour arrives for payment, the promoter has some bona fide excuse on tap that he produces along with two or three hundred dollars as a "payment down" on the full amount.  Of course, the athlete never gets any more and there is nothing that he can do about it.  Because if he exposes the promoter, he immediately bars himself from future amateur competition. Moreover, when the night of the meet arrives and he has not gotten his pay, he has to go through with his running just the same.  Because the Amateur Athletic Union which gave the promoter the sanction for the meet in the first place has demanded that the athletes sign an entry blank which binds him to appear.

Very often the Amateur Athletic Union officials have no knowledge of what is taking place.  Under the present constitution there is no adequate way to remedy this evil and some people are inclined to believe that no law even can prevent the promoter from conniving with the athlete.

OUTLAW THE "WILDCAT" PROMOTER

If the Amateur Athletic Union would legislate against the unscrupulous promoter, allowing the athlete with a "box office name" (that is to say, the competitor who has won an intercollegiate or national title, or who has broken the world's record or been a member of a Olympic team) to take part solely in the meets that are held under A.A.U. supervision, the promoter would immediately fin himself helpless.  For if he did persuade the amateur champion to compete in his "wildcat" games, the latter would be barred from amateur ranks whether he actually received any money or not, and that menace of the box office would be removed.

There is the possibility that such a rule might create a professional class in the track and field athletics.  But this is nothing to worry about, because it is a much finer thing to be an honest professional than a dishonest amateur.

Of course, the Amateur Athletic Union scorns such an idea.  Only public sentiment can ever bring the A.A.U. to terms.

The colleges are by no means guiltless.  If a high-school football player is good enough, leave it to overenthusiastic alumni to do their best to ruin him.

He senses the unfairness of the whole "amateur" system and it cannot help but guide his impressionable mind into the wrong channel.  He often sacrifices the serious purpose for which his parents sent him to college and he does not even have a decent salary to compensate him for his loss.

If you think that the boy on a championship football team, or the amateur title-holder in track, is in the game for the sheer fun of it you are wrong again, because it ceases to be pleasure when you sweat three hours a day three months of the year, working overtime in your studies in order to continue on the gridiron.

Besides the torture of daily aches and pains and the perpetual pounding that you get in scrimmage, which is many times multiplied in the game itself, you have the unceasing worry of trying to win for a fickle student body, and the responsibility of making good before thousands of screeching fans who have paid their money to see you deliver.  In every big sport, it is the same thing.  The sheer love of the game is overshadowed by takes of victory that are continually being flaunted in your face.

Your peace of mind is further menaced by the thousand and one technicalities which are forever being raised by amateur athletic officials, keeping you in hot water and eventually robbing you of your effectiveness in your own particular field of sport.

THE OLYMPIC TRYOUTS (1928)

Allow me to relate a personal experience that possibly will give the reader a clearer insight as to what I mean.  After fourteen years of competition, I decided to try for a place on the 1928 Olympic team.  It necessitated a long period of training to get back in running form again.  After several months of work in California and a series of races in the South and in the East, I had reached the point where I stood a good chance to attain my goal.

During this time I was making a series of personal appearances with a motion picture, the theme of which was the Olympic Games.  Vague rumors came to me that certain Amateur Athletic Union officials frowned up this work and were doubtful as to my amateur status.  Three months before the final Olympic tryouts, a meeting of the American Olympic Committee was held at the New York Athletic Club, and was presided over by the chairman, General Douglas Mac Arthur.

After the committee had ended its session, General Mac Arthur informed me that those present found no reason why I should be barred and, if I did no more in the future than I had done in the past, I would be perfectly eligible to represent this country in the Olympic contests.

The committee also expressed the desire that I should return to my home in California and there compete in the sectional tryouts.  Ambitious plans had been formulated for these local games and a quote of $75,000 had been established as a goal for the Olympic Committee of the Pacific Southwest.  The chairman of that committee, Robert S. Weaver, of Los Angeles, wanted to hold a special hundred-meter race to include Frank Wykoff, the schoolboy sensation; Charles Borah the national champion of the previous year, and myself as a special feature of this meet.

Though it interfered with my training schedule, I went back to California for this June 16th meet and found Charlie Borah not well enough to run.  Frankie Wykoff, however, was very much in evidence.  In fact, I had an unobstructed view of his back from start to finish in both the hundred and two-hundred.  The same night I started back across the continent again for a final two weeks of work before the Boston  (Massachusetts, USA) tryouts.

This meet had also been extensively advertised, and the Amateur Athletic Union officials and the American Olympic Committee had exploited the sprinters in much the same way as Barnum & Bailey would their paid performers.  So another great crowd was on hand when the finest group of athletes this country has ever put on a single field went out to vie for places on the 1928 Olympic squad.

Particularly was the competition keen in the hundred meters.  From the South had come the Dixie Flyer, Claude Bracey of Rice Institute, as well as Aubrey Cockrell, the champion of Texas.  From the Middle West there were George Simpson, the sensational sprinter of Ohio State; Fred Alderman of Michigan State, and the schoolboy star, Bennett; Southern California alone had sent back no less than seven outstanding dash men, while other sections had similarly large and representative delegations.

When we lined up for the first heat, I found myself facing no less than four celebrated champions with only three to qualify.  There was Henry Russell, of Cornell, who eventually made the team; Karl Wildermuth, of Georgetown, the national indoor champion; Cockrell, of Texas, and Russell Sweet of the Olympic Club of San Francisco, who since that time has been clocked at 9 2-5 seconds for the century.  Lawson Robertson, the head coach of the Olympic team, was standing near the start, and I asked him if he did not think this competition was a trifle stiff for a first round. "Robbie" smiled and said that his own drawings for the race had been overruled by the A.A.U. officials.  

There was nothing which could be done, so the five of us ran with the certainty that two sprinters at least were sure to be eliminated.

CONFLICTING  STORIES

At the end of the first half of that race (Russell) Sweet was leading, but he dropped back as we neared the tape and finished fourth. He had come more than three thousand miles for less than eleven seconds of competition.  This particular heat had found me feeling great, and I was convinced that I had run my best.  I was astonished when the time was announced as 10 4-5 seconds.  Three unofficial timers whom I knew to be men of long experience, Dink Templeton, the coach of Stanford University; Feg Murray, a former hurdling champion, and Pete Gerhardt, an old-time sprinter, had all caught me in 10 2-5 seconds.

Right then I commenced to worry.  In the second round, George Simpson, Karl Wildermuth, and I managed to qualify, which left nine men for the semi-finals.  Jimmie Quinn, the Intercollegiate champion, Claude Bracey, Jack Scholz, of New York, and myself were in the first heat. Scholz and I, having competed in two previous Olympics, held a conference, and decided that if we stayed in front of Quinn, we would be able to save ourselves for the finals.

Mr. Quinn had other plans.  He was away with a glorious start and gained so much in the first fifty yards that the rest of us were convinced we could never catch him.  Scholz and I were running even, with Bracey well behind.  As we neared the string, I came up to Quinn's shoulder, but could not quite overtake him.  I was sure that I had qualified.

The announcer immediately read the results of this heat: Quinn first; Paddock second; Bracey third.  Time 10 3-5 seconds.

The crowd was convinced that Scholz had beaten Bracey, and roared its disapproval of the decision.  All this time the judges had been in a huddle.  Finally they called over the announcer and gave him a new result to megaphone the crowd:  Quinn first; Scholz second; and Bracey third.

In the other heat, Simpson and Wykoff were battling on even terms a few meters from home when the Ohio lad pulled a muscle and fell screaming to the track, while Mac Allister and Russell captured the remaining places.  Francis Hussey, former schoolboy sensation of New York, was the only one to be eliminated.

Before the finals were held, I went to the judges and asked them if it would be possible for me to run in the seventh lane, inasmuch as there had been a dispute over the result of the first semi-final heat.  There was already a precedent for such action from the games of 1924, but the officials refused me this opportunity, claiming that it would be unfair to Hussey, who had finished fourth against Wykoff.  Mac Allister, and Russell. I then went to Hussey and asked him if he was willing to meet me in a special race, the winner to run in the seventh lane of the finals. Hussey agreed, but the officials again refused.

HE SHALL NOT PASS

I realized, as did the officials, that my best chances was in this event rather than in the 200 meters.  But nothing was done, so at the end of the first day after four hard races, I found myself as far from making the team as I had been at the beginning.

The following afternoon we came out for the 200 and the suspicions which had been already awakened were definitely confirmed by the seeding of the second-round heats.  Only two men were to be selected in each race, instead of the customary three, and I found myself facing Bracey of Texas, and Roland Locke, the world's record holder for this distance.

It meant that the three of us would leave our best on the track in the semi-final instead of in the last round.  The two who did weather this race would have nothing left with which to save off the efforts of comparatively fresh men later on.  I had the additional disadvantage of being convinced that, if I did not win this race by a clear margin, I probably would be overlooked by the judges as on the previous day.  Fortunately for Locke and myself, Claude Bracey was too weary from qualifying in the 100 meters to show his best form and we old-timers got in.

Borah won the finals, after a magnificent race in which he came from behind in the final fifty to finish with a wonderful burst of speed.  I was second; Scholz was third; and Harry Cummings, of Virginia University, nosed out Locke for the fourth position.

No sooner had my faith in human nature been re-established, than I commenced to hear those old, vague rumors about my amateur status being in question.  That night the A.A.U. selection committee met to name the team, which in past years has been no more than a clerical job, as the first four winners in each event had been automatically selected in a few minutes' time.  On this occasion, four hours slipped away, and the committee was still in session, and when they finally did disband, the refused to give out any kind of an account of what had taken place.

About three o'clock in the morning, Bryan Field, of the New York Times, called me on the phone, and said: "I am sending in a story to my paper that you have been removed from the Olympic team after a long period of discussion.  Now I want you to see if you can verify this."

I immediately got Bob Weaver, our Western representative on the selection committee, on the phone and said ..."I don't think it was right for you to throw me off the team without at least giving me a hearing."   Mr. Weaver replied that the committee, after taking such action, had agreed to keep the entire proceeding secret for forty-eight hours (which would make it too late for anything to be done before the team sailed). But Mr. Weaver requested that I see him at once.

It was a long story that Weaver told me of what had taken place in the committee room that night, and it all simmered down to this -- that Gustavus T. Kirby, whose word had long been recognized as law in both the Intercollegiate Amateur Athletic Association of America and the Amateur Athletic Union, before sailing as the advance man of the Olympic team, had been firm in one point, namely, that under no circumstances should I be included as a member of the team.  Kirby's henchmen had battled for hours to carry out his wishes, and it had been finally recommended to chairman General Douglas MacArthur that I be left at home.

It became evident enough on investigation that the A.A.U. had figured I was through as a sprinter early in the spring of 1928, and would never make the Olympic team.  However, the officials felt that what speed I yet retained could still be cashed in upon at both Los Angeles and Boston tryouts though I would not be able to run fast enough to cause them any trouble.

Even if I did qualify, they might easily overlook me in the Boston heats. They could always rule me out as a last resort - but here they had reckoned without the intervention of General MacArthur, who was not an A.A.U. representative but an Army man, drafted for the chairmanship of the American Olympic Committee.  It so happened that the general was short on knowledge of how the wheels within the wheels of the A.A.U. turn, but long on justice, and "he saw no reason why a man who had been judged eligible to compete in the tryouts should not be just as eligible to take part in the Olympic Games."

THE AFTERMATH OF VICTORY

This attitude of General MacArthur, abetted by a reminder of a decision that the American Olympic Committee had made three months previously, to the effect that if I did nothing more than I had already done I would still be an amateur, led to my re-instatement twenty-four hours before the team sailed.

All this bickering had nothing to do with my own dismal showing at Amsterdam, because I was hardened to it by this time, having gone through several other equally discouraging sieges in the past years such as Ray Barbuti, underwent this spring, and Arthur Duffey, Mel Sheppard, Charles Hoff, Paavo Nurmi and Jole Ray faced in former years.  Though I cannot erase those unpleasant memories from my own mind, I trust that no son of mine will ever be an amateur champion, for even if he does not suffer from similar experiences, he will have the discouraging aftermath of victory to face, no matter in what sport he happens to be the leading figure.

END

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