A top Chinese athletics official warned national athletes to show respect to sponsors, while slapping four promising marathon runners with fines for obscuring the logos of sponsors on their number bibs during October's Beijing International Marathon.
According to a statement released by the China Athletics Association on its official website (www.athletics.org.cn) on Wednesday, the four athletes include Ren Longyun, runner-up in the men's race, Sun Wei, tenth in men's and Zhang Yingying and Bai Xue, runner-up and second runner-up on the women's side, respectively. Each was fined due to "blocking number bibs and wearing oversized signs".
Ren, a medal prospect for next year's Beijing Olympics, was handed the most severe fine of 10,000 yuan ($1,290). The other three were each fined 3,000 yuan ($407).
"This is a first for the association, to hand out a penalty of this kind, although it has happened frequently internationally," said Wang Dawei, vice-president of China's athletics administrative center.
Ren finished second to Kenya's Nephat Kinyanjui in a new national record time of 2:08:15. Afterwards, a tournament supervisor reported that Ren's number bib did not fully adhere to his jersey, resulting in an obscured number and sponsor logo on the bib. The logo of a non-tournament sponsor was also seen on his jersey.
The other three runners had similar problems.
"It looks like we need to educate our athletes more so that we can guarantee the profits of all sides involved," Wang said. "They don't have enough knowledge on such issues."
Source: China Daily
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