Not picking a fight...

Not picking a fight but as an intellectual conversation:

A highland games competition takes place with A Class, B Class, Masters, and Women contesting the field. Awards are given for places 1-3 for each class. The games administrator/AD/comittee/string puller decides to give cash prizes in dropping denominations from 1st through 3rd for each instead of buying/paying S&H/taxes, etc on cheap Pakistan steel.

Is this a problem for anyone?

Thank you for your discussion and civility.

Jase

"Example is the best precept." ~ Aesop

I have absolutely no problem with this. I have given out Cash Prizes at games for "Non-Pro" classes and for Challenge events. In the early days we called them "Training Scholarships" but now I don't bother.

If you're offered money at a games, you take it.

I doubt there are AD's anywhere who care, or who would check anyway.

Open class ftw.

Sounds like travel money to me.

Jeremy Gillingham

"Go Big or Go Home"
Sponsors:

http://www.stoutbarbell.com/Home_Page.html

http://www.backinact.com/newpatients.htm

Borges wrote:

There is currently no major organization with rules that prohibit the taking of prize money by any athlete. None. Further, there are no rules that say you are a pro if you take prize money. So...throw far and win money. It's the American way!!!!!!

In my very first games, in Scotland 2007, I won 10 GBP for taking 5th in HWD (along with a whiskey miniature). My entry to the festival (no separate athletics fee) for that day was 6 GBP. It was a pretty cool intro to heavy athletics.

Teresa Merrick
Bellevue, NE

I agree John! Much as I appreciate being paid to throw stuff, money is nowhere near as permanent (my 8-year-old keeps asking me when I', going to bring another sword home).

throw50 wrote:

I hate the idea of money as a prize. I certainly would take money as a prize, but it would remove one aspect of the games for me.

99% of us do it for the love and fun of the sport, for the laughs and the friendships. We look forward to certain games and prepare for them in our own way, some with weights, some with barley and hops

The awards given at an event become "memory talismans" that hold the reminders to great throws, great laughs, an unfortunate sunburn, an ill-advised haggis lunch and a zillion other moments of significance for each of us.

I have a unusual array of items I have won from games...from statues to an engraved round of aluminum...and they all remind me of at least one meaningful memory. I have a Nerf sword that was given in jest, but (given the memory and the friendship it was presented in) is one of my more valuable trophies of my career.

If a third place finish defrays the cost of a meat pie at lunch, that is great, but, for me, there is significant value in the physical "thing" that is earned by competing well. Plus telling people that you spend your weekends stomping around in a field, in a kilt, tossing "that telephone thing" and winning swords....well, that is a sin of pride I highly enjoy

Its nice getting all those things..... and money.

Jeremy Gillingham

"Go Big or Go Home"
Sponsors:

http://www.stoutbarbell.com/Home_Page.html

http://www.backinact.com/newpatients.htm

If you don't need the cash you win at a Games (you know for food, or physiotherapy), save it, and use it to go somewhere you've never been to throw with people you've never met.

I've never tried to pay for airfare with a Pakistani claymore but I doubt it would go over well.