The news of Horst Dassler’s great achievement in the corridors of the airport hotel was greeted thoughtfully in the committee rooms of world sport. The era of volunteers giving up holidays, weekends and evenings to run international organisations was waning. If the brilliant Dassler could pension off the patrician Sir Stanley, what else might he achieve?
‘Money like you’ve never known it,’ he replied over long lunches. Once, he just wanted the athletes wearing the three stripes and trefoil of Adidas. Now he wanted the whole sport. A new word entered the vocabulary of sport: ‘support’. Dassler deployed his team to ‘support’ favoured candidates. And when they’d won they returned the favour, selling him the right to market their logos, their entire sports, their athletes’ achievements, to commercial sponsors. The new federation leaders got money to develop their sports with more events, more trainers and more facilities. They were praised in industry handouts, soon reflected in the press, as wise leaders who had brilliantly brought new money into their sports.
The language of sport was rewritten and the word ‘sponsors’ moved aside to make room for the more friendly ‘partners’. Nally spent half his life in the air wooing new partners from Japan to New York. Sugared drinks and fatty burgers were promoted by well-rewarded athletes whose own diets were carefully balanced for fitness and health. The administrators, even the ones who ran second in their elections, were comforted with first-class air travel, five-star hotels, generous expenses, honoraria and pensions all paid for by the big corporations. Dassler breathed new life – and money – into the General Assembly of International Sports Federations, a talking shop for sports leaders. And he gave them a home, a plush villa in swanky Monte Carlo.
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