Quotes of the Day

China's sports system, modeled on the Stalinist athletic machine, wasn't designed to celebrate the individual. Many mainland athletes, particularly divers and gymnasts, are plucked from normal life around first grade and deposited into sports schools, where they train up to nine hours a day and spend what little downtime they have imbibing communist propaganda. So it was for Tian Liang and Guo Jingjing, Chinese divers who are favored to win gold medals in Athens. It was the state, after measuring their narrow hips and flexible tendons, that decided the couple would somersault into the water for a living. At the time, they were just seven years old. Tian remembers his first terrifying free fall off the 10-m platform and the icy rush as he splashed into the unheated pool. For Guo, the pain came from being separated from her family at age 11, when she moved from her home province of Hebei to join the national team in Beijing. "My body was right for diving," she says simply. "That's why I was picked." There is no mention of having enjoyed the sport.

Yet as China hungers for a new type of hero to replace the socialist icons of a bygone era, the nation's athletes are turning their sporting prowess into a marketable asset. Tian and Guo are among the first to make this headlong leap. Tian, the reigning Olympic champion in platform diving, zips around in a Mitsubishi Pajero suv and has a closet full of Versace and Armani. His rock-star mane and six-pack abs have helped cast him as a pitchman for Amway and Bausch & Lomb. Guo, with her porcelain-doll features and two silver medals from the Sydney Olympics, is an equally alluring marketing phenomenon: she has won ad and sponsorship deals with McDonald's and Budweiser—not, of course, that she'd be caught corrupting her slim physique with a diet of beer and Teriyaki McRib burgers. Rumors of a romance between Tian, 24, and Guo, 22—though it can never be officially confirmed or sanctioned—have only enhanced their celebrity appeal, leading one Chinese beverage company to film a TV commercial in which the pair, swigging a glucose energy drink, act out a scene from Romeo and Juliet.

In the past, the very few Chinese athletes who were elevated to hero status got there by virtue of the state, which selected solely the most politically pure candidates. "If you look at China's sports history, the athlete's only purpose was to glorify the Communist Party," says Tor Petersen, co-founder of Zou Marketing, a sports-marketing firm in Shanghai. "But in the past couple of years, athletes have been allowed to express themselves as individuals, even promoting brands instead of the state." Indeed, more often than not, the mainland's most popular athletes are now picked by the free market. Liu Xuan, a pert gold medalist at the Games in Sydney, works as a model and starred as a plucky migrant worker in a movie called Far from Home. Fellow gymnast Li Xiaoshuang has recorded an album of pop ditties. Fu Mingxia, the legendary diver who first struck gold as a teddy-bear-carrying 13-year-old in Barcelona, has appeared on Sprite cans. "Sports is an industry now," says Guo, declining like a seasoned pro to discuss the details of her endorsement contracts. "It's another example of how economic reforms have changed China."

Social reforms have also revolutionized China's diving team. Guo and Tian may not say whether they are dating, but she keeps photos of him stored on her cell phone and he squired her to meet his parents last year. While the mainland's table tennis authorities recently kicked players off the national team for daring to date each other, the national diving squad maintains a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on romance. "I don't approve of athletes dating because it can interfere with their concentration," says Zhong Shaozhen, Guo's coach for the past six years. "But especially with the older ones, I can't prohibit them from living their lives." Exacerbating this management challenge, China's one-child policy has produced a generation that tends to be more demanding and individualistic. "Many kids today are very spoiled," says Zhong. "They need more freedom than when I was growing up, and through the Internet they know much more than I did at their age."

For all their newfound freedom, however, Guo and Tian are still the property of the Chinese state. Unlike Western athletes, they cannot fire their coaches, who have been assigned to them by local sports authorities. A big chunk of their endorsement earnings must be donated to the national swimming and diving association, which, in today's reformist economic era, must be financially self-sufficient. Both Tian and Guo live full-time in dormitories and are given just one day off each week, if that, to spend with their families. Reveille is at 6 a.m. and lights must be out at 10—although a few divers admit to surfing the Net after curfew. "It's just like the military," says Tian. Last year he bought a new apartment in Beijing, but "I haven't spent a single night there," he reveals. "It's in my name only."

As the pair gears up for Athens, traditionalists within the sports system are carping that Guo and Tian need to spend less time buying property and pitching products. China's diving team was a powerhouse in Sydney, winning five of eight golds, but in recent competitions the squad's much-vaunted consistency has dipped, leaving room for the Russians, Canadians and Americans. Perhaps the most disconcerting moment came in a U.S. contest earlier this month, when Guo, a favorite for the 3-m springboard event, misstepped and ended up belly-flopping in the pool. After a series of uninspiring meets earlier this year, Yu Fen, a former skipper of the national team, sniped that "there may be something wrong with the training methods," even hinting that a lack of discipline is hurting China's Olympic chances.

Discipline seemed rigid enough last week, as Guo spent a Wednesday afternoon grimly slicing through the water to prepare for an upcoming meet in Shanghai. She plunged into the pool over and over, surfacing only to hear terse criticism from her usually upbeat coach. A few meters from where Guo was practicing, six-year-old girls from the city tossed themselves off the vertiginous diving platform, their tiny bodies tumbling through the air at up to 60 km/h. The girls were all wearing plain, baggy, black swimsuits, and some looked longingly at their famous compatriot in her sleek, purple suit with high-cut legs and a splash of sequins on the rear. One day, they might have been dreaming, they too could rise above the state and blossom into an exquisitely modern Chinese sports star.

• Hannah Beech | Shanghai
• China's top divers are going for gold—and endorsements—at Athens