Olympic medal "value" report released

Chinanews, Xi'an July 17 - According to the recent report on the values of the gold medals of Chinese Olympic champions, Liu Xiang, the 110-m hurdle race champion, has the most valuable medal, which generated about 461 million yuan of business values.
The report is based on the income champions get from advertisment, and the values generated by such adverstisement, covering 5 champions in the 28th Olympic Games.
However,the "values" of champions shows tremendous differences. For example, Tian Liang, the diving champion, is the face of 30-plus brands, but his partner, Yang Jinghui, seldom show up in any commercial ads at all. Besides, Zhao Ruirui and Feng Kun are perhaps the only two popular ad stars in the national women's volleyball team. Interestingly, Zhang Yinin (table tennis champion) and Guo Jingjing (diving champion) are both pop sports idols in China, but the value of Guo's medal (233 million yuan) is much bigger than Zhang's (29 million yuan).
Gymnasics, diving and table tennis are the favorites of sponsors.
The Olympic sponsors usually only ask champions to be their faces. For example, a sponsor had had Tian Liang as its face for years, but after Tian retired, Liu Xiang has taken his place very soon.
Before the 28th Olympic Games, an enterprise signed contracts with Liu Xiang, Ma Lin and Teng Haibin. After the three became Olympic champions, they brought great profit to the enterprise. Now that the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is drawing nea, many sponsors have started picking new faces.