Schoolboy trains with Liu Xiang's coach

Zeng Jianhang and Sun Haiping.

Senior high school student Zeng Jianhang from Guangdong Province has been at the training camp of Sun Haiping, the coach of China's retired star hurdler Liu Xiang, since last October and recently the gifted young sprinter said that he is aiming to be as good as Liu in the field.

"Liu Xiang is my idol. I want to dominate the 110-hurdle race one day, as he once did," Zeng told local paper the Guangzhou Daily on Tuesday. Last year, the young runner won a gold medal in municipal and provincial 110m hurdle races and a silver medal at a national event, earning him the attention of Sun Haiping, who later recruited him into the reserve team of China's national track and field team.

Zeng is from Huangjiang Township, Dongguan, a city in the same province. He is less than 17 years old but is already 1.9 meters (6 feet 3 inches) tall, and his legs are 1.1 meters long. "In the recruitment test, I saw his height and performance in the hurdle race, and I instantly knew he would make a good hurdler," said Chen Dangsheng, Zeng's first professional coach.

Chen said the boy won a provincial race last August with a time of 14'37'' seconds. "The performance already qualified him for a Class 1 national sportsman."

Zeng has been in Sun's training camp in Shanghai for more than half a year. "It is two hours a day. The biggest difference between this camp and Dongguan is that the facilities are much better here, and the training methods are very different too," said Zeng, describing his life in Shanghai.

Zeng's sporting gift is partly the influence of his family. His father said the boy's elder brother also loves sports and has been enrolled in Wuhan Sports University in Hubei Province.