Where Winners Can't Quit

When Yang Wenjun won an Olympic gold medal in flatwater canoeing four years, he was awarded the deed to a three-bedroom apartment.

Wang, one of China’s most successful water sports athletes, has never lived in his apartment. He has not seen his parents in three years. At 24, he lives 250 miles away at his sport’s training center, where he is preparing for the Beijing Olympics.

Yang said he could not stand his life.
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Marek Ploch, a Polish-Canadian who is Yang’s coach, knows how much Yang wants out.

“He doesn’t care about the achievement,” Ploch said. “We just count the days to the Olympic Games. After that, it is possible, maybe, for him to relax until the end of his life.”
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“There are many athletes like me who never get the help,” Zou said by telephone. “We are left uneducated, unable to have children and destroyed by a system that told us it would take care of us forever.”

In China’s Medal Factory, Winners Cannot Quit