IN 1887, London's Lilliebridge stadium was torched by a 15,000 crowd after bookmakers disputed who should win the "Race of the Century" - a 120 yards "world championship challenge" between two runners. Bookies stood to lose vast sums, and faced with death threats from the satchel brigade, the sprinters escaped in separate carriages.

Destruction of the stadium proved a seminal moment for sport. It effectively ended pedestrianism, bringing professional sport into wide contempt. Amateur sport was promoted as an antidote to corruption, but became the preserve of so-called "gentlemen", and within a decade amateurism was sealed with the launch of the Olympic Games.

Not that "gentlemen" were immune from taint. George Watson's-educated Alfred Downer was the first man to win the Scottish Championship treble at 100, 220 and 440 yards (three years in a row from 1893) and set Scottish records at the distances of 10.0, 22.25, and 51.2 seconds.

Yet he was among four men banned for life in 1896 for accepting "expenses". The AAA who suspended them had accepted expenses for the team of athletes it had recently sent to the US – cynical double standards.

Downer was the first sprint superstar, setting world bests at 120 and 220 yards. The 200 metres was not held at the inaugural Olympics, but his 10.00 second Scottish 100 yards record survived for 40 years. It would have won Olympic 100 metres gold in 1896, as would 51.2 for the one-lap. The Olympic metric equivalents were won in 12.00 and 54.2, vastly inferior.

The London Referee of the day railed at the injustice in an editorial: "A very great majority of our well known performers who figure at amateur sport week in, week out, could not possibly do it if they had to pay their own expenses. It is absurd looking at the class of those most prominent in many games to suppose that they can afford to devote the necessary time to them out of their own private purses."

The same debate prevailed into the 1990s. It was almost a century before premier John Major introduced the National Lottery.

In 1920, 13 Olympic gold medals, more than a quarter of the GB total, were won by Oxbridge graduates and undergraduates, and until 1960 some 60% of the GB Olympic team was drawn from Oxbridge. Apart from sport governing bodies, only the two universities were represented on the British Olympic Association as late as the 1960s.

Pandering to privilege continues. More than 50% of GB medallists in 2008 came from independent schools – just seven per cent of the population. They included three golds from Sir Chris Hoy, from the same school as Downer. More than a third of British medal winners in London 2012 and 32% last year in Rio were from private schools.

"Amateur" sport is in a moral maze and risks becoming lost. UK Sport is so obsessed with winning medals that it spends hundreds of millions of public money with a dubious mandate. This is at least in part responsible for generating a climate which has corrupted athletes, coaches, doctors, governing bodies and their staff, and even national governments.

British Cycling's evasive responses to a Parliamentary select committee have left the reputation of Tour de France winner and five-times Olympic gold medallist Sir Bradley Wiggins so tarnished that this week his team was rejected by next month's Tour de Yorkshire. His sport, second highest funded during the four years to Rio, is under UK Anti-Doping investigation with its budget cut by more than £4m.

It also faces legal action from former Olympic champion Jess Varnish following an independent review which concluded her dismissal from funding was: “an act of retribution” against “a trouble maker”. Her allegations of sexism and discrimination by cycling's technical director were upheld. Meanwhile, this week, Olympic silver medallist Wendy Houvenaghel said a "medal at any cost" philosophy had created a "culture of fear" at British Cycling. The sport was also in fear of cuts if it failed to achieve UKS targets. And GB Paralympic swimming announced an investigation into allegations of bullying in the Rio team.

Doping is now endemic. From the world athletics body's disgraced former president Lamine Diack helping orchestrate extortion while making Russian doping positives disappear, to state-sponsored Russian doping which won a raft of Olympic medals. It has now led to Winter Olympic exclusion next year.

Perhaps worse, a BBC poll this week found 35% of amateur sports people claim to know someone who has doped. UKAD admits drug use at every level is "fast becoming a crisis". They sanctioned a medal-winning wrestler and female weightlifting champion this week, along with a Welsh club rugby player (seven years for a second offence) and a 55-year-old amateur cyclist. But these are soft targets which don't address the real issues.

There is no joined-up thinking in Government which via UK Sport disbursed £347m to Olympic and Paralympic sport for the four years to Rio. It's unclear how much of that is spent on the 110 UKS staff.

Funding for such as basketball and badminton, highly successful in combating social and health issues, has lost all support, citing insufficient medal success. So has wheelchair rugby, and tennis in which Helensburgh's Gordon Reid is Paralympic champion – one of six wheelchair tennis medals in Rio. UKS has removed every penny of nearly £2m for that sport and wants them to be self-funding. Inconsistent, certainly. And arguably discriminatory.

UKS has lost the plot in an obsession with medals in what is total reversal of the original Lottery ethos, now exposed as spurious and flawed. Designed as an award system to nurture talent, it has become a reward system for proven winners. Funds need redirected to embrace inclusion.

Only 28% of Lottery profit now goes to good causes including sport. A government stealth tax creams off 12% in duty, worth billions.

I am ashamed to have championed what seemed such an uplifting idea more than quarter of a century ago.