After winning an amazing 6 kg of gold and $525,000 (RM2.32 million) in prize money in table tennis, China’s rising star Chen Meng is expected to be the highest-paid among the Chinese athletes who competed in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
With gold in the women’s singles and women’s team events, she had an incredible performance that earned her this substantial reward. According to China Business Daily, the majority of her bonus comes from real estate mogul Guo Bin, who is married to gold medallist Wang Nan from the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Guo Bin created news ahead of the women’s singles championship match when she promised the victor 6 kg of gold. Chen, 30, stepped up to the plate and won gold in the women’s singles and women’s team competitions at the last two Olympics, defeating her fellow countrywoman, Sun Yingsha.
Chen outperformed the top-seeded Sun in the 2024 Paris Olympics despite being the second seed competing. Her victory caps off an incredible career that included second-place finishes in the 2019 and 2023 World Championships and a victory in the 2020 Table Tennis World Cup.
Guo Bin and Wang Nan’s training centre fuels China’s historic sweep at Paris Olympics
Famous names in Chinese table tennis, Guo Bin, and Wang Nan, have made a major impact on the game by founding a top-notch training facility in Weihai City, Shandong province, which is frequently used by the national team.
China, displaying its supremacy, created history at the Paris Olympics by being the first country to win gold in all five table tennis categories: women’s singles, men’s singles, mixed doubles, men’s team, and women’s team. In the mixed doubles competition, which debuted at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, China lost to Japan surprisingly in the championship match.