Former athletes building new lives

The normal story goes like this: Athletes grow up in the State-run sports system and the very few at the top win Olympic gold medals, becoming national heroes. After retirement, most of the champions become officials in local or central governmental bodies, mostly in sports sectors.

From 1984 - the year China sent its first Olympic squad since 1949 - until the 2012 London Olympics, 222 Chinese athletes have won gold medals in eight Summer Olympics and four Winter Games. About 60 percent of them chose political career paths after retirement and the rest went on to become coaches in the local or national sports team or teachers in universities.

To name a few, Wang Nan, a four-time female Olympic table tennis gold-medalist, then 30, retired after the Beijing Olympics and became a department-level cadre in the Communist Youth League.