Liu brothers join the ranks

Pair to race as Chinese athletes for first time at national championships

Hungarian-born short-track speed skaters Sandor Liu Shaolin and Liu Shaoang are set to make their debuts as Chinese athletes at this week's national championships representing Tianjin, according to the municipality's sports authority.

Born in Budapest to a Chinese father and a Hungarian mother, the Liu brothers will compete in an official race for the first time since their application to skate for China was approved by the sport's Hungarian national governing body last November.

According to Zhang Zhongquan, director of Tianjin's municipal winter sports administration, the brothers have completed all the paperwork to officially become Chinese citizens and have settled down as registered residents in Tianjin, a northern port city near Beijing where their father studied at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts before moving to Hungary in the mid-1990s.