The flip side of sporting success

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Relate to why few are willing to take up sport full time....

An athletic career is typically short-lived. A single injury can end it prematurely, as has happened with, for example, China’s champion hurdler Liu Xiang, the gold medallist at the 2004 Athens Games, who was forced to retire at the age of 31 because of an injured Achilles tendon

Tan Howe Liang, who won Singapore’s first Olympic medal (a silver), in weightlifting at the 1960 Rome Olympics, later worked as a taxi driver, a cleaner and then a gym supervisor, taking home a salary of about $1,000 a month in addition to a $390 monthly allowance from the People’s Association. 

Several other Chinese athletes in unglamorous sports such as weightlifting and the shot put, who won medals, and many more who didn’t, ended up doing menial jobs.

Qn: To what extent is sporting achievement given adequate recognition in your society? (Cam. 2018)