BOXING: Ian O'Riordanon the little man between Paddy Barnes and silver

OUR NEW favourite newspaper, the China Daily, has throughout the Olympics been running back-page spreads devoted to the athletes carrying the hopes of 1.3 billion people: a simple, darkened portrait with a brief caption explaining what exactly is at stake.

Yesterday, that portrait was of the slim, boyish face of Zou Shiming, wearing a boxing headguard and set against a deep-red background. The caption read "Competition first".

This was deliberately ambiguous: it could refer to a competition first, as in Zou coming in first, to win his first gold medal, or a competition first, as in China winning a first ever Olympic gold in boxing.

Zou is the boxer Paddy Barnes will have to stop if the Irishman wants to turn his bronze medal into silver or gold. No prizes for guessing who's under more pressure. Zou has only a fraction of the profile of the hurdler Liu Xiang and a fraction of the adoration enjoyed by the basketball star Yao Ming, yet in ways Zou is carrying an even greater burden. He's expected to do what no Chinese man has ever done.

He has already won the last two editions of the World Championships at light-flyweight, becoming China's first amateur boxing champion in the process.

He's already won the bronze medal from Athens four years ago, also at light-flyweight. But gold at the Olympics is what China wants, and that's a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of the 27-year-old Zou, particularly as he fights in the lightest of the 11 weight divisions, a mere 48 kilos.

There's a good reason why China's boxing tradition is still developing. For decades boxing was banned in China, because Mao's government considered it too violent and too western. Only in 1986 was this reconsidered, the Olympic authorities realising boxing had 11 weight classes and thus offered a pool of medal chances.

Given his record to date, Zou is hardly fighting against the odds, though to get this far, he has repeatedly defied the word approval of those around him, including his family.

Born in the poor mountain province of Zunyi, his father an engineer, his mother a teacher at the local factory school, Zou has often recalled a sheltered upbringing that made his emergence in boxing unlikely:

"My mother raised me too much like a girl. I couldn't talk too loud. I couldn't run or play around like the other boys. I didn't like to talk to other people, because my spirit was suppressed."

He still has the noticeable speck of a scar by his left eye - not an old boxing wound but from a girl that bullied him at school.

To help release his fiery spirit, he joined a washu club - a modern, hybrid sport based on traditional martial arts - at age 12. Later, he told his mother he wanted to try boxing.

"You are too delicate," she told him. "But if you don't want your mother to sleep at night, go box."

At 14, he went along to Zunyi Sport School, one of China's military-like sports institutes, where 1,900 other children were lined up for four spots in the boxing school. Then, as now, Chinese athletic potential starts with the measuring tape and X-rays (the method that discovered Liu and Yao).

For boxing, the child's wingspan - or reach - needed to exceed his height by three centimetres. Zou's measured a centimetre less, and he was turned down. Two weeks later, he showed up again, unannounced, and his pure stubbornness was rewarded with a trial.

Destiny, it would seem, was the reason Zou made it, not his reach, because within a year he was sent off to the provincial boxing team.

It was there he came in contact with his coach Zhang Chuanliang, whom Zou calls Teacher Zhang: Zhang coached martial arts until 1986, when he switched to boxing, and since then has developed a sort of Don King status in Chinese boxing. Nobody messes with him.

Like most flyweights, Zou often struggles to make his weight. He spends a full month before competition practically starving himself, admitting he frequently becomes highly irritable as a result.

And like most flyweights, Zou rarely knocks out an opponent. His strengths are his exceptional speed and endurance. He hits, then darts away, frequently dropping his fists below his waist, in imitation of his idol, Ali.

The American Rau'Shee Warren, whom Zou beat in Athens, recalled: "I was telling my coach, 'Dang, he can move', and I couldn't catch him."

After Zou won his second world title in Chicago last November, the US head coach Dan Campbell wasn't exactly flowing with words of admiration about Zou's style: "I didn't think anything of him. He did the thing that he did in the last Olympics, hitting with this part of his hand, and this part," said Anderson, gesturing to the sides of his fists.

In other words, Zou is not the prettiest boxer. But he's tough, and he's quick. And he's got the expectation of 1.3 billion on his shoulders. That may or may not prove an advantage to Barnes in the Workers' Gymnasium today.