EDITORIAL - Professionals will eventually kill the Olympics

World boxing superstar and now Philippine senator Manny Pacquiao will not go to Rio and try to win for the country its first ever gold. Pacquiao, lambasted for his lackluster performance as a congressman, said it is far more important for him now to make good in the Senate. Besides, if he changes his mind, which he does very often, it will probably be too late to get into shape for the Olympics, which for the first time has opened the door for the participation of professional boxers.

Another Filipino champion, Nonito Donaire, has a more sensible reason for refusing to fight in the Olympics. Donaire simply finds it unfair for professionals to be pitted against amateurs. It is this point of view that brings us to the core issue of why, indeed, is the Olympics, which normally was reserved only for amateur athletes, now starting to get wide open for professionals.

The Olympics first allowed professionals in basketball in Barcelona in 1992, largely because of the insistence of the United States, which almost always gets its way with anything. Except for one college player, the United States sent in an all-NBA team, which naturally swept all its assignments on its way to a sure gold. That the team demolished its opponents by very wide margins demonstrated the unfair disparity between professionals and amateurs.

But opposition to the sudden turn of events in 1992 was largely muted because the whole world was too mesmerized by the composition of the US Dream Team it actually forgot to complain. For who could complain against the greatest basketball team ever assembled - David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen, Michael Jordan, Clyde Drexler, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Chris Mullin, Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, and the lone amateur Christian Laettner.

Instead of complaining, the world gushed and marveled at the US Dream Team. So enamored was everybody that even rival teams took time out to pose for pictures with the Americans before and after every game. The outcomes became a foregone conclusion as each game became a virtual exhibition. Who would want to guard a Michael Jordan, for instance, when the impulse was to embrace him?

Other games soon followed, like tennis in London in 2012 where big money players long used to the pressures of professional play romped off with the medals, like Andy Murray who won the men's singles gold for the host country against the Swiss Roger Federer. Even athletics has been thrown wide open to professional runners whose skills have not only made them winners and famous but fabulously rich as well, both from sports earnings and from commercial endorsements.

But for countries with skewed sports development programs and priorities like the Philippines, the opening up of more Olympics sports to professional athletes becomes doubly disadvantageous. True, in boxing which offers the Philippines its only realistic chance for Olympic medals, we may have some of the best professional fighters. But so do other countries. If Pacquiao changes his mind, there is no guarantee the US will not send in Floyd Mayweather Jr. So who loses? The Olympics.