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China's Retired Athletes Left Destitute by Olympic Fervour
By Martin Croucher
Epoch Times UK Staff
Feb 27, 2008
Eight-year-old Zhang Huimin runs on a state highway in the rain accompanied by her father Zhang Jianmin, on her way running from South China's Hainan Province to Beijing in North China, August 26, 2007. (China Photos/Getty Images)
Eight-year-old Zhang Huimin runs on a state highway in the rain accompanied by her father Zhang Jianmin, on her way running from South China's Hainan Province to Beijing in North China, August 26, 2007. (China Photos/Getty Images)
Eight-year-old Zhang Huimin runs on a state highway in the rain accompanied by her father Zhang Jianmin, on her way running from South China's Hainan Province to Beijing in North China, August 26, 2007. (China Photos/Getty Images)
Every morning through the deserted streets of her home town Lingao, Zhang Huimin, completes a half marathon before dawn.
Driven by hopes of one day representing her country in the Olympics, Huimin wakes at 2:30 a.m. every day so she can complete her training before going to school.
She is eight years old.
At just over 4 feet tall and weighing only 20 kg, Huimin has trained this way under the guidance of her father for over a year. Last Summer she ran from her home town in Huanan Province to the Great Wall, in Beijing wearing a yellow bib that had emblazoned on them the characters 'Olympic Spirit, Strong Body, Extreme Challenge, Honour for the Nation'.
She is the most extreme example of a craze that has gripped China in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics.
However amidst the tsunami of enthusiasm for the Games, hundreds of thousands of retired athletes have been left high and dry.
According to China's own state-owned media, 80 per cent of the country's 300,000 retired athletes have been left in a state of joblessness, injury and poverty.
Many are encouraged to give up school at an early age to train as a professional athlete. In return for bringing glory to the nation they are promised that the state will look after them once they retire.
However, new laws have meant that instead of being given a comfortable retirement, they are often cast aside and left to scrape a living in menial jobs because of a lack of formal education.
Many are often left crippled because of the extreme training methods used to hone athletes. Medical experts believe that Huimin's little skeleton will not be able to cope with the intense training she is currently being put through and will suffer long-term injury before she has the chance to compete in the next Olympics in 2016.
If China does not develop a system for compensating athletes, it is foreseeable that her fate may follow a similar path to those who have been left destitute.
Zou Chunlan, national champion of China in women's weight lifting, learns to iron clothes at her 'Zou Chunlan Laundry' August 11, 2006 in Changchun of Jilin Province, China. Zou's plight has aroused widespread concern after she was found working as a masseuse in a public bathhouse for four years. (China Photos/Getty Images)
Zou Chunlan, national champion of China in women's weight lifting, learns to iron clothes at her "Zou Chunlan Laundry" August 11, 2006 in Changchun of Jilin Province, China. Zou's plight has aroused widespread concern after she was found working as a masseuse in a public bathhouse for four years. (China Photos/Getty Images)
Retired Athletes Abandoned, Ignored
Zou Chunlan, national champion of China in women's weight lifting, learns to iron clothes at her "Zou Chunlan Laundry" August 11, 2006 in Changchun of Jilin Province, China. Zou's plight has aroused widespread concern after she was found working as a masseuse in a public bathhouse for four years. (China Photos/Getty Images)
Zou Chunlan gave up school at the age of 13 to train as a professional weightlifter. In 1990 she won the 48 kg national title at 19 and went on to win four other competitions before retiring in 1993.
However she found that the promise that she would be looked after was not met. She was given a menial job making meals in the women's weightlifting team's kitchen until she was asked to leave.
Having no education, she was forced to revert to labour work to make ends meet, spending time carrying sacks on a construction site and selling lamb kebabs on a street before getting a job as a masseuse.
Moreover she has struggled to cope with changes in her body wrought by her single-minded training. Steroids given to her by her coach has left her with a deep voice, Adam's apple and infertile. She also has to shave every few days because of unnatural beard growth.
"I would rather be an ordinary person than a champion," she told one freelance reporter.
She is not alone. In 2006, winner of the 1999 Beijing International Marathon Ai Dongmei was forced to sell off 16 medals she had won in national and international competitions after she fell on hard times.
Denied any long-term retirement and with serious injuries she worked for a while selling clothes while her husband peddled popcorn in the suburbs of Beijing.
She sold her gold medals for 1000 yuan (L60) and her bronze medals for 100 yuan (L6) so that the couple could eat and feed their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
She split with her coach after accusing him of physically abusing her, including routinely whipping her with a belt and once breaking her collarbone. She said that all of the winnings she should have earned as an athlete were taken from her.
In 2003 the regime brought in market forces to the sports sector wholesale, introducing a law which shifted all of the responsibility for employment onto athletes themselves.
"This group of athletes is the legacy of China's economic development," Liu Mingyu, deputy director of Liaoning Provincial Sports Bureau told the Beijing News. "I feel for them, but there is nothing we can do to help all of them."
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