Despite having a year where his reputation took a huge hit in his home country Chinese Superstar Sun Yang still found himself in the second place position when it comes to his country’s top earning athletes.
As reported in the Global Times Sun earned approximately 3.55 million USD in 2013, finishing a distant second to women’s tennis star Li Na who collected approximately 20.1 million USD in the same calendar year.
Of course Sun still had incredible success in the pool winning the 400, 800 and 1500 freestyle at the 2013 FINA World Championships in Barcelona.
According to China.org.cn Li also topped the list in 2012 earning just over 18 million USD, while Sun was third on the collecting approximately 4.81 million USD. Although these numbers do seem to contradict other reports of what the Chinese swimming star collected after his performances in London.
The drop in Sun’s earnings is understandable since swimming garner’s the highest rewards in an Olympic year and most likely was not greatly effected by the negative attention he received for his public disagreements with his coach and his arrest for driving without a license.
How come we know more about how much a CHINESE swimming star earned in one year, and yet we have NO idea how much an AMERICAN swimming star (like Lochte or Coughlin) earned last year???
I think that is a huge irony.
I love him! He’s a very elegant swimmer and cool, and a winner. Put him under scrutinity all you want he still made amazing achievements in 2013, and outside the pool, he also participated in volunteering projects.