Word: tian
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...country's best-known diver, Tian Liang, a two-time Olympic gold medalist on the 10-meter board and until last week the world champion, wasn't even in Australia. He has been at loggerheads with China's sports administrators ever since he returned in triumph from the Athens Olympic Games. Conspicuously absent from the roster of divers headed for Melbourne, he lost his place on the national team because of what control-obsessed sports bureaucrats called his excessive "commercial activities...
...month after the Athens Olympics, Hong Kong entertainment agency Emperor Entertainment Group offered Tian over $1.68 million to join the firm as an athlete-entertainer. Tian shot several television commercials, earning $140,000 in just two months' work, local media reports say. He and his then girlfriend, Guo Jingjing, also a world diving champion, became a celebrity couple, making regular appearances in gossip magazines and television. It was a revelation for the sheltered Tian, who had been so dependent on his sports handlers that he didn't know how to order food in a restaurant until...
...Tian had good reason to believe that China's sports industry would become more commercial. After all, three Chinese have played in the National Basketball Association. And a handful of top athletes and coaches in table tennis, badminton and track have appeared in prime time TV commercials...
...Tian was different. Other athletes who had disagreements with the administration all end up apologizing. Wang Zhizhi, the former NBA player, had to make a public apology last April before sports officials would allow him to play in the China Basketball Association. He had been frozen out for four years after disobeying orders to return to China to practice in 2002. Tian's ex-girlfriend, Guo Jingjing, made a public self-criticism in 2005 to avoid being kicked out of the national team for "attending too many social activities." But the "Prince of Divers" as he is called, would never...
...internationally as an advanced Muslim country." Indeed, earlier in the year, Abdullah appeared so confident about his homeland's spiritual diversity that he rejected a plea by the non-Muslim members of his Cabinet to more strenuously protect religious freedoms. "We are at a crossroads as a nation," says Tian Chua, spokesman for the opposition National Justice Party. "The extreme religious rhetoric is threatening what we worked so hard for 50 years to accomplish...