Sixty years before shooter Xu Haifeng fired himself into the record books as China's first Olympic champion, another Chinese-born athlete raced, with little less fanfare, to a gold medal at the 1924 Games.
Eric Liddell, best known as the subject of the 1981 film "Chariots of Fire", was born in the north Chinese port city Tianjin in 1902 and died in a Japanese internment camp in China in 1945 after following his parents into missionary work there.
John Keddie, who has written a new biography of the Scot, believes there might be a case for calling Liddell China's first Olympic champion even though he ran for Britain when he won 400 meters gold at the Paris Olympics.
"He was born in China, he died in China, he helped the Chinese people and he had a great love for China, it really was his frame of reference in his life," he told Reuters by telephone.
"These things endear him to the Chinese even though in principle there is a hesitancy about making a hero of someone who was a Christian missionary."
It is a little-known but fascinating fact that, to date, the only Chinese-born athlete to win a gold medal for sprinting was actually British. Eric Liddell is still regarded as a hero in China, where he is known as Li Mu Shi (meaning pastor). Born in 1902 to Scottish missionaries in the northern coastal city of Tianjin, he made his name at the 1924 Olympics in Paris where he won the 400 metres after refusing to run his best distance, the 100 metres, because the heats were held on a Sunday. A devoted Christian, his defiant action was later immortalised in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire.
Read about Liddell on Wikipedia and watch this recreation of him winning the gold from Chariots of Fire:
True story of the 1924 Olympics. Eric Liddell disqualified himself from the 100 meters because he wouldn't run on the sabbath. A teammate gave up his spot in the 400 meters so that he would have a chance at a medal on another day.
The first Chinese-born gold medal winner was a Scottsman:
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