This essay examines an incident in the Olympic Games of 1928 when Australian sculler Henry Pearce stopped his boat in a race in order to avoid hitting a family of ducks. It was, it is argued, a definitively amateur gesture; it is also now a prominent piece of official Olympic history. Pearce's pause, however, was not widely acknowledged at the time it took place. This, I contend, is because British rowing was then dominated by gentleman amateurs who were disinclined to recognize amateurism in people they regarded as socially inferior. Furthermore, the apparent rehabilitation of Pearce and the ducks in official Olympic history has to do with a 'Disneyfication' of the movement's past, designed to offset in the public mind the abandonment of Olympic amateur ideals.