Hamburg - Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova and Yelena Isinbayeva are just three Russian athletes who have gained worldwide fame beyond their simple sports skills. The tennis players Kournikova and Sharapova are regular fixtures in fashion and other glossy magazines. The pole vault world record holder and double Olympic and world champion Isinbayeva also transcends her sport.
These new opportunities were generated to a large extent by the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of Communism in Eastern Europe.
However, growing media interest, looks and/or unrivalled skill allowed some athletes to transcend all ideological borders even at the height of the Cold War - often in sharp contrast to their grim and grey party leaders.
East German figure skater Katarina Witt not only won historic back-to-back Olympic gold 1984 and 1988, she was dubbed "the most beautiful face of socialism" by Time Magazine.
The hardline Communist government seemingly couldn't resist her sex appeal either as Witt was the first East German athlete allowed a professional career. She had a stint in the movies and dropped her clothes for Playboy Magazine.
But Witt was not the only woman from the East to wrap a western audience around her fingers.
Gymnastics at the Olympics has propelled several athletes to worldwide fame, most notably Czech Vera Caslavska 1964 and 1968, Soviet teenager Olga Korbut in 1972 and Romania's Nadia Comanechi in 1976.
Heike Drechsler, meanwhile, took the athletics world by storm with her outstanding sprint and long jump skills, winning world and Olympic titles for her past and present country.
Like Witt, she was linked with the Stasi, and with the state-run doping scheme as well. But Drechsler has always protested her innocence, saying she was abused.
"I fear that I became a victim. The GDR system manipulated and monitored."
The men's side also provided Communist Bloc heroes, for their great sports skill.
Czech distance runner Emil Zatopek, high jumpers Valeri Brumel (Soviet Union) and Rosemarie Ackermann (East Germany) and Soviet/Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergei Bubka are among them.
Soviets Lev Yashin and Vladislav Tretyak are rated among the greatest goalkeepers the sports of football and ice-hockey have ever seen.
Even though they famously lost 1980 Olympic gold to the US, Tretyak and his teammates including Boris Mikhailov, Sergei Makarov and Viachislav Fetisov brought a new dimension of class to ice hockey under coaching legend Victor Tikhonov.
Cuba, and China since recently as well, have also contributed many sports legends from the Communist world.
Theofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon of Cuba are considered two of the best Olympic boxers ever along with Hungary's Laszlo Papp, with each man winning three Olympic golds.
The former 110m hurdles world record holder and 2004 Olympic champion Liu Xiang stands for the new China which embraces some capitalist mechanisms. His injury-related withdrawal from the Beijing Games sent shockwaves across China and many other countries.
