Colour Me Disillusioned

Or naive.
I had assumed that the competitors in the Olympics, talented thought they may be, were all amature sportsmen and women. In fact I had bemoned the fact that professional tennis and soccer players were entered, it seemed rather unfair, why not allow the young amatures a chance?
How wrong I am. It seems all the contestants can be classed as professionals, they receive pay for what I had foolishly believed was the honour of representing your country.
This morning on our local radio station the opinion seemed to be that if the cricket and rugby players earn so much, why not the athletes.
My take on that is why do the sportsmen earn so much money to begin with? I consider it shocking that a man is paid upwards of $1 000 000.00 for playing a round of golf and as much as I love Man United really, what outrageous wages.
I understand that coaches are needed to help the young athlete and that coaching may be his bread and butter, what I don't understand is the absurd amount of money it take to raise a swimmer (for example).
Does it, in fact, boil down to  the country with the most money  always being the winner? or the country that directs more of it's resources toward sport?
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather see nations direct their spare cash toward sport rather than war but what happened to the glory of wearing the green and gold, the pride in representing your nation, 100 000 British Pounds is a cool bonus but I didn't expect to see such large "prizes" going around.
O.K. I'm off to brush up on my shopping skills, perhaps one day it'll be an Olympic sport.