Athletics in the UK: The Rise and Fall of the BAF

64 The joint standing committee (JSC) practice, it was not uncommon for an official amount to be paid into a fund and an unofficial amount paid in cash. Not only this, but the definition of what counted as reasonable costs was so elastic that an athlete could pretty well do what he liked and, for example, payments for car purchases or mortgages were nodded through. It was a system that could not last and was eventually abandoned, athletes being treated just like other professional sportsmen. Looking back to this period, subsequent generations of athletes are likely to find it hard to understand why this transitional arrangement of trust funds was necessary. Why not simply accept reality and immediately legitimise payments – as quickly happened? The answer lies in a mixture of tradition and sports politics. It would not have been possible for a single country such as Britain to go it alone as athletics is an international sport and the rules are set by the IAAF. At that time, these rules decreed that athletics was an amateur sport and that athletes should not earn money from competing. Also, within countries such as Britain, the concept of amateurism had become deeply ingrained since Victorian times and the possibility of a move to “open” athletics was highly controversial and would have been anathema to many of the (amateur) administrators and officials. Internationally, the IAAF recognised that the amateur rules were widely ignored but, in order to modernise their rules, needed a majority of votes at a congress of all the member countries to enact any changes. The IAAF was far from confident that a majority of countries would favour such a fundamental change as many, particularly those within the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence, Africa, and some others feared that they would lose their control over their athletes and the income that they generated. The Treasurer of the IAAF, Robert Stinson, who was a solicitor, came up with the idea of the trust fund, which would maintain the pretence of athletes not profiting directly (or, at least, immediately) from their performances and would also enable the federations to retain influence over their athletes. However, as I have mentioned, this was a system that could not last and, not many years later, it was abandoned. In fact, sports historians will tell you that, prior to the advent of the Victorian “gentleman athlete”, much of the sport in Britain had been highly professional with large sums changing hands from wagers and such like. Future historians may well conclude that it was actually the period of