Medal maidens: Victory ceremony assistants show the design of the 2009 East Asian Games medals.

An impressive list of world-class athletes, including numerous Olympic gold medallists, will compete in the 2009 East Asian Games in Hong Kong from December 5 to 13.

The Mainland list includes 2008 synchronised three-metre springboard gold medallists Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia, Olympic badminton men's singles champion Lin Dan, and 2004 Olympic 110-metre hurdles champion Liu Xiang.

Competing for Chinese Taipei will be Chen Wei-ling, who was third in the world women's weightlifting, and Liu Shin-mei, a two-time world champion in cue sports.

Out to win gold for Japan are top men's table-tennis player Mizutani Jun, and first and second ranked women's paddlers Hirano Sayaka and Fukuhara Ai.

South Korea has high hopes for success in the pool with 2008 Olympic men's 400-metre freestyle gold medallist Park Taehwan, and on the range with 2008 Olympic men's 50-metre pistol champion Jin Jongoh.

Medal design

The medal design was also unveiled at today's one-month countdown ceremony for the games, which is unique and moved away from the conventional solid disc medal designs by intertwining the leaves of plants from the participating countries and regions.

Medal designer Freeman Lau said: "With a standardised size of each leaf, it represents the fairness and justice of the competition. The leaves are connected one by one to symbolise the success of the games and make 'Be the Legend' strongly reliant on the power of every games athlete, spectators and supporters."

Also making their debut today, victory ceremony assistants have been selected from games volunteers and have gone through months of training. They will help at the 262 prize-presentation ceremonies throughout the games period.

A new television commercial to promote community participation will be broadcast from today, featuring games ambassadors Alan Tam, Hacken Lee, Eason Chan, Lee Lai-shan, So Wah-wai, Yu Chui-yee, Leslie Santos and Amy Chan.