What happened was that the whole ‘shamateur’ idea got so silly that even the IOC bureaucrats caught on.
Now the national governing board for each Olympic sport can decide whether professionals can compete. Now we have the American Dream Team in basketball, Lindsey Davenport in tennis, etc.
Not that the athletes were anything close to amateur in the old days. The USSR, East Germany, and so forth, were well known for giving their athletes jobs that did not involve showing up or doing anything other than train. Vasiley Alexieyev has a couple of dachas on the Black Sea, for heaven’s sake. It is said that he never wanted to break a world record by very much, because he was paid a bonus for each record broken, and he wanted to milk that for all it was worth. And American athletes had scholarships, or often accepted money under the table.
At least now we have the best athletes competing.
Now if we could only see something on NBC other than gymnastics and swimming four hours a night.