h century because of an ethos of fair play they were thought to be incapable of exhibiting (Guttmann 2003). Ironically, it was working class women who most often earned money from sports, like weightlifter Kate Roberts and wrestler Mildred Burke, two sports considered ôtotally unacceptable for womenö (Guttmann 2003, 905). As women gained more political power, they gained more income and from greater participation in sports once dominated by men (tennis, golf, basketball, etc.). As such, legislation that paved the way for women to participate in sports to a greater degree and across a broader range of sports undermined such distinctions as amateur and professional. As Guttmann (2003) maintains, ôIn the 1980s and 1990s, as a significant number of female athletes began to earn large sums of money in sports that had been dominated by men, and just as professional leagues for female athletes became economically viable, the ideology of amateurism became moribundö (905).
Politics has always been involved in and surrounded the Olympic Games
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