China will dominate track and field at Paris 2024, says the American Olympic coaching legend overseeing it

American coaching legend Randy Huntington believes Chinese athletics has walked out of the shadow of retired hurdler Liu Xiang and, no longer a one-man band, is on the way to becoming a world power.

“When I came in 2013, nobody had heard of anybody like Liu Xiang,” said Huntington, who is in town for a coaching seminar after returning from the recent World Indoor Championships in Birmingham, UK. “Now when you walk out into the Worlds, they are looking at China. Before they did not see China, they only saw Liu Xiang ... It’s very different now. There was no China before – there was an athlete only. Now they see a country.”

In 2013, one year after Liu, the 2004 Athens Games men’s hurdles champion, was forced to withdraw from a second Olympics at the London Games, Huntington was appointed coach for China’s track and field sports, with the 2015 Beijing World Championships and the Olympic Games in Rio the following year his major targets.

After spending four decades in the sport, Huntington has more than kept his side of the bargain, guiding Willie Banks to beyond 18m in the triple jump (albeit wind-aided) and, most memorably, Mike Powell to his world record 8.95-metre long jump at the 1991 Tokyo World Championships.

The American, who’s contract with the Chinese authorities has been extended recently for another Olympic cycle to the 2020 Tokyo Games, attributed the change from the post-Liu Xiang era to the success of many other Chinese athletes.

“The women’s field athletes did a great job for the country at the 2017 World Championships in London as javelin, discus and hammer throw all performed well,” he said. “We fell down in the men’s long jump and triple jump but we achieved some good results at the Rio Olympics with the success in triple jump and the long jump that had never happened before. Now many people in track and field see China.”