Even in China, a century is a long time to wait. In 1908, as the fourth modern Olympic games took place in London, a magazine called Tianjin Youth posed three questions. When would a Chinese athlete take part in the games? When would the country send a team? And when would it stage the games?rnThe answer to the first question turned out to be 1932, when Liu Changchun, a sprinter, made his way to Los Angeles from his home in north-eastern China, then under Japanese occupation. He won nothing, but is remembered as a hero.rnChina sent teams to the Olympics in 1936,1948 and 1952, but then stayed away until the winter games of 1980. Four years after that, when the summer games returned to Los Angeles, Xu Haifeng, a pistol-shooter, won China's first gold medal.
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