Marathon runner reaches settlement in coach lawsuit
A former Chinese marathon champion reached an out-of-court settlement with her coach om Monday, dropping charges of inhumane training and theft of her winnings..
"Ai Dongmei and the plaintiffs have dropped the case," a spokesman at Beijing's intermediate court said following Monday's hearing. "As the case has been dropped, we cannot comment on the settlement."
Ai brought the suit against coach Wang Dexian in September last year, seeking 160,000 yuan ($21,000) in damages for injuries incurred during training and accusing him of taking her prize money.
According to The Beijing News newpaper, Ai and her two former teammates nearly got all their training subsidies and prizes awarded in international competitions during their careers.
"I have got a compensation of 120,000 yuan ($15,000) and $16,000. Guo Ping received 110,000 yuan and Li Juan 53,000 yuan."
Former marathon champion Ai Dongmei holds her daughter in front of her sportswear store on May 27 in Beijing. Ai opened the store using money denoted by the public after she announced she had to sell her medals to raise funds as her prize money had been withheld by her former coach. Zhuo Lei |
"The money is what we should have deserved. It is a result worth years' of hard work," Ai told the newspaper.
Ai, from the northern province of Liaoning, was a successful runner with the track and field team of China Locomotive Sports Association, a club for top athletes, and China's national squad.
But when injury ended her career four years ago she was cut loose without a penny, she said.
Ai made headlines in April when she said she was so poor she needed to sell 16 medals she won during eight years on China's national team.
She also unveiled a pair of badly deformed feet that could leave her crippled for life, the result of the inhumane training she said was inflicted by her coach.
After filing the lawsuit, "the leaders of the railway team came to me and said that they wanted to resolve this quickly. They asked how much money we wanted and they gave us every cent," she said.
Ai said she had mixed feelings over the outcome of the case and said the pending Beijing Olympics had encouraged her to go for a quick resolution.
"Before we lodged the lawsuit we had repeatedly gone to officials and leaders at every level, but this did not resolve the issue one bit, so we decided to file the lawsuit and fight until we got a clear response," Ai said.
"Later, friends told us that the 2008 Olympics were coming and that the longer we kept dragging this on the bigger the loss would be to the (image of the) nation.
"They said if they offered money we should just take it. That way the loss to the nation would not be so big."
AFP
(China Daily 06/20/2007 page22)
