<P> The exclusion of professionals caused several controversies throughout the history of the modern Olympics . The 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon champion Jim Thorpe was stripped of his medals when it was discovered that he had played semi-professional baseball before the Olympics . His medals were posthumously restored by the IOC in 1983 on compassionate grounds . </P> <P> The advent of the state - sponsored "full - time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self - financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage . The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but all of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full - time basis . As a result, the Olympics has shifted away from pure amateurism, as envisioned by Pierre de Coubertin, to allowing participation of professional athletes . </P>

Which us state has the most olympic medals