Hundreds of joyful Libyans gathered in the capital, Tripoli, late Saturday to celebrate the national football team’s first victory since anti-Gadhafi forces toppled the long-time Libyan leader and forced him into hiding.

People cheered and fired off celebratory gunshots in Tripoli’s central Martyrs Square which, until recently, the Libyan government had used for mass demonstrations in support of the former leader, Moammar Gadhafi.

The Libyan team, playing under a new flag and singing a new national anthem, won its 2012 African Nations Cup qualifying match in Cairo against Mozambique 1-0, taking Libya to the top of Group C.  Rabi al-Lafi scored the only goal of the match.

Serbians weary of seeing the world’s media focus on their country’s recent wartime past are uniting in praise of a new national hero, Novak Djokovic. Djokovic trained as a young boy amid the chaotic breakup of Yugoslavia, rising to become world tennis number one and favorite for the U.S. Open. But the recent arrest of two former wartime generals has provided another reminder of the conflicts that tore the Balkans apart in the 1990s.

Tennis coach Jelena Gencic is putting two young players through their drills at a rundown court on the edge of Belgrade. Gencic lived through seven decades of her country’s turbulent history. She is hailed as the person who discovered Serbia’s biggest sporting star. Gencic describes the moment they first met.

“I saw one little boy just behind the fence, watching, watching, watching all morning,” said Gencic. “I come to him and ask him, ‘OK boy, do you know what we are doing here?’ ‘Yes, I know. You play tennis.’  ‘Oh. What’s your name?’ ‘Novak Djokovic.’ Very clear. Very strong.”

Djokovic’s image adorns buildings in Belgrade. His every match is watched avidly in sidewalk cafes. It was not an easy route to become number one in the world.

Just as Djokovic was discovering his talent for tennis in the early 1990′s, Yugoslavia began its bloody breakup. His teenage training years took place against the backdrop of the Kosovo conflict and NATO bombing raids on Belgrade.

Coach Gencic describes how she dodged the bombs to keep Djokovic playing tennis.

“I listened to the radio. ‘There’s a bomb here in Banitsa.’  OK, next day, we shall play here.  ‘No!  Why here?’ Because tomorrow the bombs will hit another side of the city,” she said. “That’s what happened. When I listened in the morning to where the bombs were, so we would go in that part of Belgrade to practice tennis.”

As Djokovic’s triumphs put Serbian tennis on the map, the country has been in the spotlight for very different reasons.

The arrest in May of former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Maldic and in July of former Croatian Serb general Goran Hadzic have been painful reminders of the country’s brutal past. Both are accused of committing war crimes during the Balkans conflict.

Ljiljiana Smajlovic is president of the Serbian Journalists’ Association. She said there is anger at the way Serbia is simplified in the world’s media.

“In the sense that Djokovic is someone that we look up to and we’re happy that the world sees us in a better context than it has in the past, and at the same time there is resentment… Mostly when people think of Serb war crimes, I think it’s in terms of the resentment that they are played up so much in the West and it’s not in terms of, ‘God, are we going to face up to our past?’” said Smajlovic.

The arrests of Mladic and Hadzic were meant to boost Serbia’s hopes of joining the European Union. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned Belgrade, however, that it needs to make progress in talks with Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

Smaljovic said Serbs are growing tired of EU demands.

“I see some trouble ahead in this lack of hope almost. This feeling that we’re being told there’s no alternative all the time. Hearing that there’s no alternative is not something that makes your heart grow fond,” she said. “Because transition has been, for the most part, that you lose your job and then you never find a job as good as that one.”

Belgrade does not seem like a city stuck in its past. The annual beer festival is just one of many events to have emerged in the last decade that attract visitors from across the globe.

But the lack of interest among young people in Serbia’s recent history concerns Miljenko Dereta, director of the non-governmental organization, Civic Initiatives.

“We had a survey recently because we have a youth program, and we were shocked by the lack of information they have,” said Dereta.  “They didn’t know there was a war in Bosnia, incredibly. They didn’t understand why the Hague tribunal is judging only the people from this region because they didn’t have the basic information it was formed for this region.”

Back at the tennis club on the outskirts of Belgrade, Gencic is mentoring the next generation of Serbian stars.

At 12 years old, they were only just born when the NATO bombs were falling on Belgrade. They have one aim – to emulate their hero.

“Novak Djokovic,” said one young player when asked which player inspires.

“Novak Djokovic,” replied another.

Like millions of people across Serbia, they will be following every step of Djokovic’s attempts to win his first U.S. Open title. He is the one person, it seems, who unites this country – the new face of Serbia.

Female Muslim athletes who observe a strict Islamic dress code sometimes face the question of whether they will be allowed to participate in major competitions — with their heads and most of their bodies covered.  Now, one Iranian-Canadian woman is marketing a product to change that.  It complies with the requirements of many major sports, and it’s fashionable, safe and comfortable — while still meeting Islamic requirements.

An Olympic hopeful faces a small obstacle

Seventeen-year-old Zeinab Hammoud has a brown belt in Taekwondo, and dreams of one day making it to the Olympics.  But unlike her sister, Rana, Zeinab chooses to wear the Islamic headscarf, or hijab.  

This became a problem four years ago. The team’s hard work, passion and hopes were dashed when the Taekwondo Federation of Quebec expelled them from a tournament in 2007. The reason: their hijabs were considered unsafe. “I was really disappointed because I trained really hard for that tournament. When I found out we were expelled I lost all my motivation to continue,” Hammoud said.

Civil rights supporters and sports enthusiasts around the world were enraged. Elham Seyed Javad was one of them. “In my opinion every individual, no matter their religion, should have the same rights as anyone else in society,” he stated. “I mean, sports was made to re-unite people.”

Athletic fashion

Javad was an industrial design student at the time, so she decided to take on the problem as one of her school projects. “At the time, in 2008, when I decided to take on this project, the international federation of Taekwondo didn’t allow its athletes to wear anything under the helmet. So my professor didn’t think there was a point of pursuing it.  But my point was, the rule is there because nothing has been invented that is appropriate,” she explained.

Javad spent countless hours with the Hammoud sisters’ taekwondo team and with pattern maker Latifa Boukenda, to make the best product possible. “This was a very exciting project for me. I’ve worked in fashion for many years but this was special because it was beyond fashion,” she said. “It had a more human and social aspect to it. helping young women blossom and follow their athletic dreams.”

Ultimately, they hit upon a design that worked, and a fabric that was stretchy, breathable, and dried quickly.  Called a “ResportOn,” the garment was an immediate hit.

Even Zeinab’s sister Rana, who chooses not to wear the hijab, was impressed. “I just tried the Resport hijab and the hair was inside so it doesn’t come out and it’s very comfortable so you can play without trying to put your hair inside all the time,” she noted.

Rules reconsidered, changed

Javad’s invention came at an opportune time.  A year later, in response to pressure from the taekwondo community, the World Taekwondo Federation changed its rules to allow for head-coverings.

The Montreal Muslim Taekwondo team was able to compete again.

“I was in the stands and got teary-eyed because since the very beginning my goal was to be able to see the girls on the mats again. When it happened it was like someone gave me the world,” Javad stated.

Javad thought she was just helping Zeinab and her teammates.  But when an investor approached her about marketing the product, things changed dramatically.  In January, her sports hijab became available to athletes all over the world.  She has been busy ever since. “My days start at 2am when my phone goes off with an email from an athlete from the other side of the world. I turn it on and read the email, get happy and go back to sleep,” she said.

While there are other sports hijabs on the market, Javad believes hers has some advantages.  Those include a built-in t-shirt that keeps it from pulling loose, and an opening at the back that allows easy access for wearers to adjust their hair.

A brawl during what was supposed to be a friendly U.S.-China basketball match is threatening the positive image Washington and Beijing are trying to create during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to China.

The purpose of the exhibition basketball match was to foster goodwill.  Instead, online videos of the game showed an all-out brawl between the two teams – the Georgetown Hoyas and the Bayi Rockets.

Amateur video footage showed a bench clearing melee in the fourth quarter with the score tied. Players from both teams punched and kicked each other. The game was then called off. As the Georgetown team walked off the court, video showed spectators booing and a few throwing cups at the players.

Brook Larmer wrote a book on China’s best known basketball player, called “Operation Yao Ming.”  He was not at the contentious match, but saw video afterwards.

“I don’t want to get too involved in a partisan fight or discussion, but I think the Chinese team was unbelievably quick to jump off the bench,” he said. “The precipitating incident was an elbow, an elbow from one of the Georgetown guards.  You have to take into account that this happened after lots and lots of pushing and shoving, and name calling, and trash talking, and even a Chinese player getting in the face of the American coach.”

Georgetown is a University team from Washington D.C. The Bayi Rockets of Shanghai play in the Chinese Basketball Association, China’s top professional league.

Larmer notes that the Bayi Rockets is the People’s Liberation Army’s team and used to be the centerpiece of the Chinese government’s state-run sports system.

“Basketball was one of their [PLA’s] last [sports] strongholds and they’ve faded from the limelight, and now they’re just a middling team that has a reputation for being a little overly pugnacious,” Larmer explained.

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Thursday night’s brawl took place at the same time visiting Vice President Joe Biden was across town banqueting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, who is expected to become China’s next president.  The two countries have been working hard to present the relationship as a very good one.

Larmer points to the chaos as a wasted opportunity to build better ties through sport – in which basketball diplomacy could have replaced ping pong diplomacy.

“You don’t want to say that it’s a metaphor for U.S.-China relations, because it certainly isn’t, but it does bespeak some of the tensions underlying these games that are supposed to be just friendly,” he added.

Larmer says he is concerned by what he describes as “a disturbing trend” of more violence in Chinese basketball games – both within the national league and supposedly friendly matches with players from other countries.

Chinese players fought even more violently last year, in a goodwill match against a team from Brazil.  Following the dust-up with the Brazilian team, some of the Chinese team’s coaches were fined and the players sent to sportsmanship classes, but, as Larmer notes, no player was suspended.

A goodwill game between a Chinese basketball club and a U.S. collegiate team turned ugly Thursday in Beijing, when players from both teams exchanged blows and the U.S. team withdrew from the contest to the safety of its locker room.

The U.S. coach, Georgetown University’s John Thompson, pulled his players off the court with about 9:30 left in the 4th quarter, with the hotly contested game against the Bayi Rockets tied at 64.  The Washington Post, with a reporter present, said the retreat came after players from both teams threw punches and tackled one another.  It said spectators threw water bottles at the American players and an unidentified man threw a chair at one of the U.S. athletes.  

A photograph from the China Daily showed three uniformed Chinese players and a fourth individual kicking a Georgetown player as the fallen athlete tried to get up off the court.

The game comes as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is visiting China to discuss economic relations between the two countries.  Biden did not attend Thursday’s game.  Biden, however, attended a Georgetown game the day before, watching the U.S. team win against another Chinese club team.

There was no immediate comment from Chinese officials.  In Washington, a State Department official called the event “unfortunate.”  Georgetown’s coach Thompson issued a statement calling the game “a contest between two great teams” played at a “very competitive” level.  The statement said “we sincerely regret that the situation occurred.”

The Washington Post report said the brawl erupted after a Georgetown player took exception to a hard foul from a Rockets player and the two exchanged shoves.  Witnesses were also quoted as saying police made no attempts to break up any other skirmishes that preceded the game-ending melee.

Georgetown was scheduled to depart Beijing for a game in Shanghai Friday, but it was not clear whether the team would complete the final five days of its tour.

Some information for this report was provided by AP.

At first glance, the grass playing field at Mountain View Alternative High School in Centreville, Virginia, looks like any playing field at any high school in the country. But for a Sunday in August when most schools are usually still, there was a lot of activity, and the stifling air rang with a mix of Hindi and the occasional English cries of “Six!” “Awesome shot!” “Good running, man!”

Only they weren’t playing football, basketball or track and field. They were playing cricket, a sport which was last popular in the U.S. more than 150 years ago, but is seeing a dramatic resurgence as immigrant groups, particularly from India and Pakistan, grow.

This particular match was between Ashford Cricket Club (ACC) and the Willow Cricket Club, two teams out of 32 that comprise the Washington Metro Cricket League (WMCL), one of several leagues in the DC area and one of 45 leagues nationwide officially recognized by the USA Cricket Association (USACA).

“There’s not enough room for all the people who want to play,” said Hitesh Panchal, the captain of ACC and one of the founders of the WMCL. “There are just not enough places to play.”

The players in the WMCL are largely from the Indian subcontinent. Some are U.S. residents, some citizens and some here on temporary H1B employment visas. Many work in the computer field, said Panchal. They’re of all ages, some are married and others are bachelors, but they all share a deep love of the sport.

Growth Potential

According to John L. Aaron, the Executive Secretary of USACA, there are 20,000 league players in the U.S. and likely 200,000 recreational players.

He thinks cricket has huge growth potential as well, saying there are millions of people living in the U.S. from countries where cricket is popular, namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the West Indies.

“It’s growing in two important areas,” Aaron said. “You are seeing people from countries where cricket is not played starting to play, and more importantly, it’s being handed down to the children of immigrants from countries where cricket is played.”

While there are no cricket version of Little League yet, Aaron didn’t rule out the possibility.

Aaron said that during the 2007 Cricket World Cup, which was held in the West Indies, more people in the U.S. watched than in any country other than India, where cricket is a religion unto itself.

Despite the increase in popularity, the United States is a long way from competing at a world-class level with countries such as India, England, Bangladesh, Australia, Pakistan, the West Indies, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and South Africa, the full members of the International Cricket Council (ICC) that vie for the World Cup every four years.

The U.S., for now at least, remains a second-tier, associate member of the ICC. However, with the recent growth in popularity, some of the world’s top teams have started coming to the U.S. to play exhibition matches.

For example, in May of 2010, the New Zealand and Sri Lankan teams played two, one-day matches at the only ICC-sanctioned cricket stadium in the U.S., which is located at the Central Broward Regional Park in Florida.

“There was good attendance,” said Aaron. “There were quite a few Americans who were not familiar with the sport, and they were asking a ton of questions.”

Cricket in the U.S. It has been a long time since there was this much interest in cricket in the United States. It was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in 1844, the U.S. was the first country ever to host an international cricket match, which was against Canada. In fact, it’s said to have been the first international sporting event ever. But after a brief heyday in the mid-19th century, cricket began to be pushed off the American sports radar by baseball, a derivative of Cricket often called “America’s pastime.” Baseball was seen to lack the aristocratic air of cricket and could be played anywhere by anyone. It remains largely baffling to most Americans, but it’s fairly easy to understand if you know a little about baseball and have someone explain the rules. You’ll quickly learn that six is an all-important number—sort of the cricket version of the homerun in baseball, but worth six points instead of just one.

Serious Competition

While there were no spectators at the WMCL match, the league is serious enough to have come up with $10,000 to invest in the pitch, a specially prepared turf strip in the middle of the field where most of the action takes place. The league also maintains a very thorough website, complete with team and individual statistics as well as player profiles.

WMCL matches aren’t played with a regular cricket ball, but instead with a modified tennis ball. Panchal said this was to avoid potential liability as well as to make the game playable without the protective gear required when using the very hard, leather ball. Some leagues do play with a regulation ball, Panchal said.

The WMCL matches are highly competitive and taken very seriously by the players. As in baseball, when one team is batting, the other takes to the WMCL version of a baseball dugout, in this case, a couple of picnic tables in the shade by the field. From there, they shout encouragement to their batsmen. On the field, there’s more than a little trash talk, said Panchal.

Players are also not afraid to verbally clash when they feel a call doesn’t go their way.

Two controversial calls by the umpires cleared the benches, and while it never got close to trading blows, heated words were exchanged.

Cricket is not taken lightly.

“It’s fun, competitive and also a good workout,” said Ganesh Gopal, whose DC Yorkers team took to the field in the next match. “Why else would I spend almost five hours on a weekend for the game?”

In the end the Willow Cricket Club edged out ACC 143/8 (Overs: 20.0) to 102/10 (Overs: 16.5). ACC was closing the gap, but one of their batsman was called out on a controversial play. Panchal, like any competitor, blamed the loss at least partially on the poor quality of the umpire.

American-style football is seeking an entry into India. But it is unclear whether a country that has a single-minded obsession with cricket will take to this all-American sport.

That’s because although American-style football ranks among the top favorites in the United States, it has virtually no following in India.

That fact has not deterred a group of foreign investors from launching the Elite Football League of India, or EFLI.

Eight teams representing India’s largest cities will kick off the EFLI’s inaugural season next November in the western city of Pune. The organizers say there is huge potential in a country of 1.2 billion people.  

Sports analysts in India are not so sure.

Football commentator Novy Kapadia in New Delhi sees the launch of American-style football in India as an attempt at globalizing the sport. But he says it remains to be seen whether the rough and tumble sport will excite Indians, for whom it is “an area of darkness.”   

“This is really a surprise, a bolt from the blue,” Kapadia says. “There has never been attraction towards American football, neither is American football watched a lot on television. Also, genetically and physically it is a game for much stronger people and does not really suit the Indian physique.”

The EFLI will have to begin from scratch, training both players and coaches. But it has big plans. It will add new teams in each season for 10 years, or until it has 52 teams representing all Indian cities with a population of over one million.

The organizers say they are confident of finding a niche population that will be interested in a sport that is part of the American way of life.

Sports commentator Kapadia says American-style football is entering India at a time when other sports enterprises, such as Formula One auto racing, are also eyeing the country’s huge middle class.   

“The world is seeing India as a market, and I think the sporting world has caught on a bit late,” he says. “But they’ve seen that even a 200 million middle class is larger than most countries in Europe. This consumer middle class, which is increasingly getting globalized, exposed to satellite television, English speaking, who like to be associated with global brands, just the same reason Formula One is coming into India, is probably the reason why American football is coming.”

American Football will have to compete with cricket, the sport that has a nationwide following. Cricket’s Indian Premier League, which launched in 2008, has been a spectacular success and has turned into a multi-million dollar business.

Investors in EFLI include the former coach of the Chicago Bears, Mike Ditka, former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski and former Green Bay Packers linebacker Brandon Chillar.

U.S. endurance swimmer Diana Nyad has ended her second attempt in 33 years to swim from Havana, Cuba to the Florida Keys.

After nearly 30 hours in the water, the 61-year-old athlete abandoned her effort Tuesday because of asthma, shoulder pain and battering wind and waves. The swim was expected to take 60 hours and cover 166 kilometers. Nyad was swimming without a shark cage.  

Instead, she was protected by an electronic field from equipment towed by kayakers to repel the predators. Five other boats, along with a 45-person support team, accompanied her. Nyad swam without a wetsuit or special equipment.  

She had called the swim a “symbolic moment” for increasing understanding between Cuba and the United States, which do not have formal diplomatic relations. Nyad said she does not intend to attempt the swim a third time.

While expressing disappointment at the outcome, Nyad said she does not regret trying to complete the journey. She attempted the same feat back in 1978 when she was 28 years old, but ended it because of high winds and rough seas.

Australian swimmer Susan Maroney completed the swim in 1997 with the help of a shark cage. Maroney was 22-years-old at the time.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

When one thinks of the sports in which China excels, swimming, gymnastics or track and field usually come to mind. But ice hockey? While the sport may not have as big a following as soccer or basketball, there are an increasing number of youngsters who are learning about slap shots, hat tricks and teamwork.

Flying Tigers

Nestled in a newly built neighborhood on the northwest side of Beijing, high up on the fourth floor of a massive shopping complex, is one of this city’s newest ice rinks. It is also the site of an ice hockey camp for young, talented players.

For several weeks last month, the Flying Tigers hosted a summer camp for these young players. Most were from Beijing, but some came from as far away as Hong Kong and the northeastern province of Heilongjiang.

“Initially coming to China where hockey isn’t their main focus, I was very impressed with the skill level of the kids right from the 04-05s, right up to the big kids,” said Kevin Masters, one of several coaches flown in from Canada. “The specifics of the skating and the individual type skills are absolutely comparable to what we see back home in Canada.”

Supportive parents

And where there is ice hockey – a sport that requires a lot of time and money – there are always ice hockey parents cheering their kids on and giving pointers.

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“When my son started playing ice hockey, we had just seen the movie Transformers and he thought goalies look like Transformers with all of their pads on and because of that it was his favorite position,” said Zhou Jianwei, whose eight-year-old son is a goalie.

Zhou says that in China, where many families have only one child, his son is learning more than just a sport.

“Many kids [in China] lack a sense of teamwork and what it means to work hard for what they want to get because their parents have taken care of everything for them. But since he’s started playing ice hockey, he’s slowly begun to understand how to work together with his teammates to accomplish a goal and gained a sense of how [in society] people need to help one another to get things done,” Zhou said.

China’s colder northeast provinces are largely considered the home of ice hockey in the country. And, a large majority of the players on China’s national ice hockey team grew up there.

New ice rinks

Now, with new rinks in Beijing, that is starting to change. Local hockey organizers note that the number of U16 or 16 year-old ice hockey players in Beijing is likely to surpass the number of players in the northeast in the next season or two.

The reasons, they say, are because more families in Beijing can afford ice hockey, which is an expensive sport, and because the northeast is opening up to other sports, which is taking players away from the ice.

Cao Zhennan says her father played hockey while growing up in the northeast and helped to get her son interested.  She says the lessons her son learns from ice hockey far outweigh any future prospect of making the national team or playing more competitively.

“Ice hockey is a fast and physical sport, it’s a really a fun sport,” Cao said. “On top of that, he’s a boy and we got into the sport hoping it would help him become more courageous. It (ice hockey) also gets more interesting as the kids learn how to work together and make a lot of new friends.”

Charlie, an 11-year-old, who plays right wing, says his friend Abiyasi got him interested in the sport a year-and-a-half ago. Charlie says the sport has other benefits besides keeping him away from computer games.

“I think it’s fun. It’s good for my health and it’s not boring!” Charlie said.

More teams

Mark Simon, vice president and head coach of the Beijing Imperial Guard Hockey Club, one of several teams in the Beijing Junior Hockey League, says team rosters have been growing in recent years.

“A group of us, our club and a few others started a league in 2008 and 2009 with four teams, which included about 50-60 players,” Simon said. “Now, last season in 10-11, we had about 25 teams, so about 300 players, 300-350.”

Simon, an ex-banker from Montreal who started playing ice hockey at the age of five, says he left his gear in Canada when he first came to China. Several years later, he works for a company that builds rinks in Asia.

He says that as far as Asian cities go, Beijing is quite spoiled.

“To have four full ice sheets is quite rare,” noted Simon. “And that is one of the reasons ice hockey is growing here a lot more quickly than in places like Hong Kong. Hong Kong has got a huge hockey following, a lot of kids playing, but they are very limited by the number of ice surfaces they have.”

Just getting started

Lane Moore, another coach who is helping out at the Flying Tigers camp, says ice hockey is just getting started in Beijing.

“With their development of new rinks, new ice surfaces, the numbers in Beijing are going through the roof and I am hearing in Shanghai it is the same way and I just think the potential for ice hockey in China is going to keep going,” Moore said.

Both he and Kevin Masters say they never expected to be running an ice hockey camp in China, and certainly not on the fourth floor of a shopping mall. But they say the publicity from curious shoppers helps build interest in a sport that they say is quickly on its way from a novelty to the mainstream.

Chinese sports stars such as retired National Basketball Association player Yao Ming and tennis star Li Na have made their mark for China on the global stage, rising up from the country’s rigid state-run sports system to success in the international arena. However, not all of China’s athletes are so fortunate. In fact many, who begin training at a young age, and have known little other than their sport, find it hard to make a living once they leave the court or gymnasium behind.

Zhang’s story

Recently in China, the plight of Zhang Shangwu, a retired gymnast and former world champion captured the public’s attention and sympathy.

Zhang won gold medals for his performance on the rings at the 2001 World University Games in Beijing. But that ended up being his career peak. He later spent time in jail and last month he was found begging on the streets of Beijing.

Zhang retired from gymnastics a year after he failed to make China’s 2004 Olympic team. After retiring, he was reportedly given compensation and a pension of around $6,000. Down on his luck, two years later and in poverty Zhang says he sold his gold medals for around $10. Not long after that, he was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for stealing.

Not uncommon

Fan Hong, a former administrator at the Chinese Sports Ministry and swimmer who is now a professor at the University College Cork in Ireland, says Zhang is not an exception and many athletes face the same problem.

She says that while the Chinese government has made efforts to try to improve the situation, there are still a large number of elite athletes – especially from minority sports – that face such challenges.

“It’s good for them to get Olympics medals, but when they retire it’s not really very popular for them to get a sponsorship and endorsement from the business community. So that is a real challenge,” Fan explained.

In China, there are thousands of athletes who rise up in the country’s state-run sports system from a young age – focusing all of their energy and time on the prospect of winning a gold medal at the Olympics.

There have been many other reports of former Chinese athletes selling their gold medals to make ends meet.

No preparation

China’s move from a centrally planned economy to a market economy over the past two decades has made life tougher for former athletes. Analysts say educational background and professional capabilities now play a bigger role in hiring decisions, and so elite athletes who spent their youth focused on sports are uniquely disadvantaged.

Fan Hong says before the 1990s, when athletes retired they would find employment as a coach or another job through the government. From then on, the government’s policy was for the sports ministry to keep looking after athletes,  but focus more on helping them find jobs on their own.

“They provide some opportunities for athletes to go to university after the retirement, and then there are some special policies for those elite athletes,” Fan said. “For example if you are a gold medalist at the Olympics, or if you have achieved the top three places in international sports events, [and] you could go to university without the same requirements or scores.”

Fan says sports commissions also provide athletes with some money to set up businesses or to find jobs after retirement, but not everyone is always taken care of.

Conflicting stories

In Zhang Shangwu’s case, he says he had a falling out with his coach when he was disqualified from the national team and that his coach refused to help him get into a sports college.

A report from the state-run Xinhua news agency told a different story, however. Xinhua quoted his coaches and provincial sports officials as saying they tried to help Zhang and that he had violated the rules of the team that he was on at the time. The report said Zhang failed to change his ways after repeated efforts from his coaches and team leaders.

Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology says regardless of what may have happened with Zhang, the system needs to change.

“Objectively speaking, these people did not have much of an education growing up,” noted Hu. “It would be difficult to train them for different jobs. The country should provide these retired athletes with a more comprehensive social protection program, so that these people who have contributed so much to the country can comfortably retire and have some type of a safety net.”

Change of luck

But for individuals like Zhang Shangwu, it may already be too late for such changes to help them at all. Luckily, in his case there has been an outpouring of job opportunities following media coverage of his story. In late July, Zhang began working for a wealthy Chinese businessman, Chen Guangbiao, who offered him a job as a personal trainer for himself and his employees.

“I think that in this society there are many young people like Zhang Shangwu. There are many who need our love, who need people with a sense of social responsibility to help them,” Chen said.

Chen says that in addition to helping Zhang find a job, he will try to help him meet a girlfriend and maybe even settle down and start a family.