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Liu Changchun's youngest son did not know his father was the first Chinese to ever compete in the Olympics until over four decades later.

"My father never told me that he was the only athlete China sent to participate in the Los Angeles Games (in 1932). I only read about it later in the newspapers," recalled the now 62-year-old Liu.

"I didn't know he had even been abroad until one day in 1972 when an aftershock in our hometown of Dalian reminded him of an earthquake he had experienced in Japan.

"Then he told me he had seen whales spouting water while he was on a ship to the US for the Games," Liu junior told China Daily in a recent telephone interview.

Liu failed to make a major impact at the Games and was eliminated in the preliminary heats of the 100m and 200m sprints, clocking 11.1 seconds and 22.1, respectively.

He blamed this partly on a 25-day sea journey from Shanghai to Los Angeles that had left him under par, and later maintained a low profile due to a personal sense of failure on his, and China's, Olympic debut.

At home, however, nobody could match his sprinting speed. Liu, born in 1909 in Dalian, in China's northeastern Liaoning Province, set a national record of 10.7 seconds at the 100m in 1933 and kept an iron grip on the record for 25 years.

From the 1930s, he taught physical education at several Chinese universities. After the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he became a professor and later head of the PE department at Dalian University of Technology, where he worked for over three decades until his death in 1983.

He also spent time serving as vice-president of the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC).

Liu pushed as political puppet

In 1931, Japan began its occupation of three provinces in northeastern China, including Liu's hometown, and created a puppet state called Manchukuo.

The Japanese decided to send Liu to the first Los Angeles Games (LA again played host in 1984) to help legitimize the puppet regime and make it look to the international community as though it had been fully accepted in China.

But Liu refused to represent the regime, even posting his rejection of the offer in the Ta Kung Pao newspaper.

A patriotic Kuomintang general, Zhang Xueliang (also spelled Chang Hsue-liang), donated about US$1,000 to fund Zhang's independent Olympic trip, but the money soon ran out after the Games, and Liu had to raise funds from the local Chinese community to make his way back home.

"Our family lived under Japan's surveillance for a long time after my father came back from Los Angeles. And he could not even return to his hometown as the Japanese were trying to arrest him. The entire family was living in total destitution because my father could not get a proper job for a long time," the young Liu remembered based on what his older siblings had told him.

The difficult situation changed Liu's attitude towards his athletic career.

"My father always warned the six of us (his children) not to take up sports as a future career, because the country at that time did not pay much attention to it," he said.

"Father wanted us to study science, because he thought technology would be the most effective way to strengthen a country's national power.

"He always told us that only the powerful countries could be strong in sports."

Liu Changchun saw to it that five of his six children made it to university, quite a feat as few Chinese made it to college in the 1950s and 60s.

"But he always loved sports and he always wished that an Olympic Games would be hosted on our home soil," said his youngest son.

Stories about his patriotic Olympic career were not widely reported until Beijing won the rights to host the 2008 Games in 2001.

His offspring are now making it their mission to spread their father's Olympic spirit to the world.

"Both my wife and I are retired now, but we dare not travel very far. We get calls from the media almost every day asking about my father, and I wouldn't miss the chance to tell them about him. This is our contribution to the Beijing Games."

(China Daily 08/08/2007 page25)