a quote from The Amateurs by David Halberstam

I've read The Amateurs a few times and I recommend it to any rower or anyone even remotely interested in rowing or in the Olympics...but after yesterday's post about rowing I felt the need to share this quote that I think "gets it":

''Those who competed did so with a demonic passion. Yet there was no overt financial reward at the end, nor indeed was there even any covert financial reward, a brokerage house wanting and giving special privilege to the famed amateur. Yet the athletes were almost always the children of the upper middle class, privileged, affluent. One could understand the son of a ghetto family playing in the schoolyard for six hours a day hoping that basketball was a ticket out of the slum. It was harder to understand the son of Beacon Hill spending so much time and subjecting himself to so much pain to attain an honor that no one even understood. Perhaps in our society the true madness in the search for excellence is left for the amateur."