Liu Zige, shaky future?

Chinese swimming team arrived Rome a few days ago and Chinese media started going around and gathering infomation for their big guns. One of these is Olympian champion, Liu Zige. After a surprising win in women's 200m fly, Liu, her coach, Jin Wei and Shi Feng (semi-finalist in men's 100m fly) fled to Australia for the training camp. She competed in Australian NC and then Chinese NC in April where she did 2:07 low which was considered a good time. Definitely, People in China expected more since she swam a sensational WR 2:04.18 at Olympics.

Today, there was a media report about her coach, Jin Wei who appeared to be frustrated about their current siutation. In the report, he said, "Please leave Liu alone. We don't want to be famous and she is just an ordinary national swimmer. There is no good to be famous." The journalist came up with something skin-deep,"Liu with fame can shoot commercials" Jin refuted," Liu only shot 2 commericals and she only earned 10,000 and 6,600 bucks from them. What's good for being famous?"

the journalist then turned the focus to the training cost. First, she mentioned 2 million of the training allowance for Tao Li in Singapore. Tao is a former Chinese swimmer from Hubei Province who is now representing Singapore and was a 4th placer in 100m butterfly at Olympics. (Surprisingly, Tao's father, Tao Rong is the manager of HuBei swimming team which has been rising in domestic scene for the last few years and has produced fine swimners such as Zhao Jing and Li Jiaxing who competed in Olympics). In contrast, Jin Wei's training operation is rather traditional. After he came back from Australia in 1995, he founded a swimming school on his own in Liaoning province where Liu and Shi Feng started their swimming training. In 2004, Shanghai was organizing an athlete selection event and Jin and his disciples were selected to join Shanghai team which had produced Olympic champions such as Yang Wenyi, Zhuang Yong and Le Jingyi. I guess, the facilities in Shanghai should be superior to other province. As far as I know, Shanghai has produced world class sportsman like Yao Ming (NBA player), Liu Xiang (men's 110m hurdle world champion and Olympic champion in 2004) and Qian Zhenhua (men's modern penthalon world champion in 2005) and a lot more. Yao should be 2nd or 3rd Chinese NBA player (sorry, not a fan for professional basketball) and the latter two are unprecedented in China. It appears to me Shanghai is one of the important places where symbolizes the breakthough of Chinese sports.

The report then mentioned in 2007, Jin sold his car to build a pool for training of Liu and Shi and after Liu's win at Olympics, the 1st thing she wanted to spend is to get her coach a new car. However, with all the glory behind them, a new financial problem is standing in the way of Jin. They fled to Australia for training camp this January and all the costs were dipped from Jin's pocket which greatly worried him. He sighed, "I may retire after bankcrucy."

Talking about swimmers' future, He said," It is uncertain and I have no clue whether they will be on the next meet (National Games). I have no idea what will be happening tomorrow. Now, I only have Liu and Shi and when Liu retires, I will go too. When the time comes, I may do something else (rather than coaching). Being an ordinary man is pretty much what I want."

There is full of uncertainties in Jin but when the topic turns to the competition in Rome, he restores his confidence,"We don't have pressure. We come here not to sit back because we are representing China. We will go all out or we don't go out."