The 19-year-old Liu Zige burst onto the scene with a glittering gold at her first Olympic Games in Beijing on Wednesday. Just as male freestyler Zhang Lin made breakthrough with a podium finish on home soil, Liu's stunning success also had something to do with "Australian elements".

After shaving more than one second off the previous world record held by Australian Jessicah Schipper, the unknown Liu clinched the first title for a relatively weakened host swimming team.

But Liu's coach Jin Wei didn't agree that his pupil was a dark horse. According to him, Liu was a promising star with huge potential, great endurance and assiduity. What's more, she has been training under the advanced methods which he studied from swimming powerhouse Australia.

Once a breaststroke specialist, Jin retired in 1988 then went to work at an Australian swimming club for four years from 1991 to 1994.

In 1998, Jin established his own swimming club in China's Liaoning province, trying to transplant what he had learnt in Australia to his coaching career.

Six years later, an open-minded Jin became a coach in Shanghai team. His students such as Liu Zige and Shi Feng began bagging golds at national meets.

Last year, Jin brought his talented swimmer Liu to Australia for a two-month training, under the guidance of famed Australian coach Ken Wood who was the tutor of world champion Schipper and breaststroke star Leisel Jones' initiator.

With the help of the advanced training regime, Liu has been speeding up on fast track by improving her personal best to two minutes and 7.76 seconds at the national Olympic trials this April.

"Ahead of the Olympics, I just trained as usual without special content," said Liu "I kept making progresses during practice and came here with no pressure at all."

Liu said she had expected to improve her personal best at the Games but the world record of 2:04.18 was indeed beyond her imagination.

As for Liu's national teammate Zhang Lin, who became the first Chinese male swimmer to snatch an Olympic medal by finishing second in the 400-meter freestyle on Sunday, his achievement had a more obvious "Australian label" on it.

Once the top freestyler in Asia, the 20-year-old Zhang was totally in the shadow of South Korean prodigy Park Tae-wan at the 2006 Doha Asian Games and failed to make breakthrough at the 2007 Melbourne World Championships while Park sensationally defeated Australian big fish Grant Hackett to clinch a title.

Then, a disappointed Zhang came to Australia at the end of last year, mentored by Denis Cotterell, former coach of long distance king Hackett.

In months leading to the Games, Zhang broke the 400-meters freestyle national record twice and finally hit a new high score at the Olympic Games with a personal best of 3:42.44, only 0.58 second slower than gold medalist Park.

(Xinhua News Agency August 14, 2008)