Chinese Olympic champion hurdler Liu Xiang mocked for dressing in Red Army uniform

Dressed in Red Army uniforms and with clenched fists, vowing to strive hard in the 2016 Olympics, solemn-faced Olympic champion hurdler Liu Xiang and a group of athletes from the national team have attracted media attention and a barrage of online ridicule.

The photos, which made newspaper front pages and were widely circulated on the internet, show coaches and members of the Chinese national track team on Sunday at a motivational meeting for the Rio de Janeiro Olympic games in Jinggangshan, a remote mountain area in Jiangxi province and the birth place of China’s communist revolution.

Instead of holding pep talks in changing rooms before games, a practice common among coaches around the world, China’s sports administration officials prefer to hold motivational conventions, and sometimes organise trips to famous places associated with communism, to rouse athletes’ revolutionary fighting spirits ahead of major sporting events.

But this approach has fallen foul of China’s internet users who criticised Liu for participating in what is widely seen as inappropriate and pointless propaganda.

“Putting athletes in Red Army uniforms and making them vow to strive hard is a bad move. Sports events ought not to be politicised,” one online user commented.

Other internet user accused the athletes of acting as propaganda tools of the Communist Party.