The Wikipedia article on the Seoul 1988 100m final has this great line, "Of the top five competitors in the race, only former world record holder and eventual bronze medalist [USA's Calvin] Smith never failed a drug test during his career. Smith later said: "I should have been the gold medalist.""
It is woth thinking about how things can be kept "deliberately less prestigious". I'm a curling fan. In the 1990s, a "professional tour" of curling developed, but with the Brier/Scotties--Canada's national championships--staying strictly amateur. Most of the best joined the Tour, some remained amateur for the accolades of being "national champion" and representing Canada internationally. Then the pros were let into the Brier/Scotties, making it a weird pro-am of some of the best teams (some, not all...only one team got to represent the bigger provinces) against whatever best amateur teams came out of New Brunswick or the Yukon that year. Then to help "improve competition", there's been 20 years of rule-fiddling to allow free agents, wild card teams, and a half dozen exemptions to residency requirements that now mean you'll have three teams from Manitoba and a Team Quebec with only one person actually from QC. No technology question here, but all of this being driven by the pursuit of a VERY small amount of sponsorship and broadcasting money, and very localized, very niche, but very real status seeking behaviour. Curling Canada has also responded by now creating a "national club championship", the "Classical Olympics" of Canadian curling... which is what the Brier/Scotties was originally. Does it remain deliberately less prestigious enough to function as intended over the long term?
Thanks for this excellent comment! I love the curling example. I agree that keeping things non-prestigious is not a straightforward problem at all. My imaginary scenario suggests a bunch of institution design choices that might help (like keeping things in the same location each time, and forbidding broadcasts... maybe actually having the athletes naked would help most for this!). But if, despite those things (or even because of them, if being less accessible increases the appeal), people decide they like it and pay attention anyway, that's hard to resist.
An interesting future.
The Wikipedia article on the Seoul 1988 100m final has this great line, "Of the top five competitors in the race, only former world record holder and eventual bronze medalist [USA's Calvin] Smith never failed a drug test during his career. Smith later said: "I should have been the gold medalist.""
It is woth thinking about how things can be kept "deliberately less prestigious". I'm a curling fan. In the 1990s, a "professional tour" of curling developed, but with the Brier/Scotties--Canada's national championships--staying strictly amateur. Most of the best joined the Tour, some remained amateur for the accolades of being "national champion" and representing Canada internationally. Then the pros were let into the Brier/Scotties, making it a weird pro-am of some of the best teams (some, not all...only one team got to represent the bigger provinces) against whatever best amateur teams came out of New Brunswick or the Yukon that year. Then to help "improve competition", there's been 20 years of rule-fiddling to allow free agents, wild card teams, and a half dozen exemptions to residency requirements that now mean you'll have three teams from Manitoba and a Team Quebec with only one person actually from QC. No technology question here, but all of this being driven by the pursuit of a VERY small amount of sponsorship and broadcasting money, and very localized, very niche, but very real status seeking behaviour. Curling Canada has also responded by now creating a "national club championship", the "Classical Olympics" of Canadian curling... which is what the Brier/Scotties was originally. Does it remain deliberately less prestigious enough to function as intended over the long term?
Thanks for this excellent comment! I love the curling example. I agree that keeping things non-prestigious is not a straightforward problem at all. My imaginary scenario suggests a bunch of institution design choices that might help (like keeping things in the same location each time, and forbidding broadcasts... maybe actually having the athletes naked would help most for this!). But if, despite those things (or even because of them, if being less accessible increases the appeal), people decide they like it and pay attention anyway, that's hard to resist.