Off Track ..... When friends become foes ...

Vietnamese Hoang Anh Tuan met Chinese weightlifter Long Qingquan in 2006 when he spent three months in Hunan province to train with the local team.

At that time Long was just a 15-year-old boy, who soaked up computer games in his spare time. Hoang, in contrast, was already a well-established lifter, determined to win a medal at the Beijing Games to make up for his medal-less trip to Athens in 2004.

They were close friends for those three months, but Hoang never expected to see Long again, as the two lifters went their separate ways to pursue their own medal dreams.