Athletes are run into the ground in China

Although she harbored Olympic-sized dreams, the coal miner's daughter thought she also had a good backup plan. If she couldn't become the best of the best, she could always retire from sports and get a government job as a police officer.

That promise by her coach, she says, helped her endure a brutal training regime in which she and other runners had no contact with the outside world and no one to protect them from the coach, who beat them with a whip or baton, or knocked them off their feet with the bumper of his car if he thought they were slacking off.

But four years after she retired at 26 with nothing but an elementary school education and a body crippled by sports injuries, the former marathon champion says she has been duped.

Not only is there no job waiting for her, but Guo and her teammates charge that their coach pocketed their government-paid wages and refuses to give them back.

"We trusted him because we were young and he was our coach," Guo said. "He told us he'll save the money for us and we can have it all back later and not a penny will be missing."

Guo and two other former teammates at the Railway Ministry league are taking their coach, Wang Dexian, to court. Wang denies misappropriating their money and has said his beatings weren't severe.

But the case is an embarrassment to the host of the 2008 Summer Olympics and a reminder of the communist machinery that once mass-produced athletes and now can't afford to take care of them after retirement.

The athlete's entire training is financed by the state, and successful athletes, even basketball whiz kid Yao Ming, now a star for the NBA's Houston Rockets, are considered government properties who must do as their leaders say. Their job is about gaining glory for the country, not pursuing personal interests. Many poor families consider professional sports the best way out of poverty and are willing to sacrifice personal freedom for the leg up.

'Relics of the past'

But the cradle-to-grave welfare system that took care of their predecessors no longer exists. A lifetime of repetitive physical training and a lack of proper education conspire to make them poor candidates for the competitive new economy.