Video: 'Olympic Athletes Are Broke But Executives Make Millions'

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Only one city in Olympic history made money as a result of hosting the Olympic Games, and that was LA in 1984, because they had leverage. Until the IOC reforms, and starts sharing the profits, I have no interest in the Olympic Games, and I encourage athletes and audiences to withdraw their interest. It's not like they're losing anything.

(14:25)

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

I'm still watching them. I'm on Disc 15 out of 38. I copy to DVD and speed though the stuff I am not interested in. I don't have lots of time for TV, so it takes me time to get through them.

Too bad for the broke athletes. Some make big $ in sports, others don't. I have a hard time feeling sorry for the broke ones because I'm in the same boat. I have to pay to do my work. Not a penny in it for me and it is even worse because it cost me $. They had an Olympic athlete that said he paid his own way and got no support from the USA; but his dream was to compete in the Olympics and he achieved that dream. That is just how it goes. If you can get paid to do what you love, great. If you have to pay to do what you love, then that's the best you can do.

I'd love to make some $ at my work, but I don't. I don't begrudge being broke except when I can't do my work because of the $. I got enough money to live, so am grateful for that. I have no real use for the $ after a certain point except to feed it back into my work. And feeding it back into work has limits as well. I mean if a person has billions the money can own them and they don't own the money. I don't want to be bothered with all that. Everything you own takes a little piece / peace of you.

I don't require much. I got food, a car, a room, heat, A/C and the roof don't leak. I am not interested in Rolexes, a private jet or Lambos. But I would like a workhouse, a decent cine' scanner or two, a film cleaning machine and a few other things for the archive. Above that it is excess money more or less. Oh, I would like some land and a greenhouse to grow a few fig trees in and maybe some warm weather persimmons.

Now, some people require more. An old gal down the street has a kinda rich sister. I don't know how rich she is, but rich enough to rent a $60K a week yacht and crew for her family to island hop the islands in Greece. Rich enough to have a lake house, house in Florida along with her local house. Rich enough to hire a private guide to stay with them for their 2-week trips to Europe. Rich like that. I'm not interested in that type of thing...it would be a chore to me.  It would disturb my work having to figure out which house to go to next.

Some would think that if I had excess money, I would open up a huge archive and hire lots of people to do the work.  I do my work from an inner curiosity that I have about times gone by aka seeing history, not reading about it. So, unless I got my nose up its ass with the work I'm doing, I don't get a lot of benefit from it having someone else do it. Plus, I hate dealing with people. So, managing a big or even small workforce is not for me. But going back to the dreams of big $...it would be nice to be able to hire freelance photogs to document art shows around the country...I could do that.

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Swann poster collection / DDTJRAC

Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography

Edited February 25 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.