Prizemoney at the Paris

Even Adriaan Paulen would have supported the move. The late and former president of the IAAF was not moved nor motivated by the glitzy baubles of office that began to be dangled in front of sports administrators as the 1960s swung into the 70s.

However, the disciplined, honourable Paulen was dedicated to the athletes he served.

So the news this week that track and field is set to become the first sport to introduce prize money at the Olympics – with World Athletics saying it would pay US$50,000 (NZ$82,278) to gold medallists in Paris later this year – would likely have seen Paulen praise, and not scold, current organisation president Sebastian Coe.

Paulen competed at three Olympic Games, making the final of the 800 metres in 1920 in Antwerp, and beat Eric Liddell – of Chariots of Fire fame – in the 400m quarterfinals in Paris four years later.

Part of the Dutch WWII resistance movement formed by friends at the local running club, Paulen was given the highest award of the Dutch nation – the Order of King Willem – at the end of the war, and was elected to the athletic federation council a few years after.

Athletics then had no TV coverage, no sponsorship. The organisation’s secretary had to pay part of her own fare to the Melbourne Olympics and stay with a local family, Vyv Simson and Andrew Jennings wrote in their book The Lords of the Rings when profiling Paulen – who would sleep on the ground at the side of the road when driving for 10 hours to attend an athletics meet.

Neither athletes nor administrators at Olympic level have to do that now – yet it still probably came as a surprise to many sports fans that superstars such as Usain Bolt, Cathy Freeman and John Walker never got paid by their world governing body for their incredible performances on the biggest of stages – even when the era of the Games being solely for amateurs had long passed.

The world’s best track and field athletes are now well-rewarded to the extent that an extra 50k for some of the gold med