Tian said their work covers areas such as evaluation of athletes' physical condition and technique, psychological management and recovery of nutrition.

The group is now scattered throughout China's various national teams, working side by side with athletes and coaches.

"The overall scientific research level of CISS may not be the best in the world, but we offer the best service to our athletes," he said.

The researchers are required to use layman's terms in their reports and offer simple, direct tips to athletes and coaches.

Labs at the China Institute of Sports Science

Liu's coach Sun has built a reputation for cooperating with the research team. According to team leader Li, the team records and edits Liu's daily training graphs and burns a disk for Sun every day to help him study the athlete's form.

At one of Liu's competitions, the team found his best sprinting speed over the hurdles and then edited a video of a 110m hurdles race with 10 clips.

"We show the video to Liu before every match to help him remember his best moves. It's called imagery training," Li said.

"The track and field arena is just like a battlefield where Sun is the commander, Liu is the soldier and we are the think tank."

Can Liu run any faster?

"He has very good hurdling techniques but his starting speed is a little bit slow. Now we are working on that," said Li.

But not every Chinese coach believes in sports science.

"It takes time for them to understand and realize the importance of sports science since some don't have much if any higher education," the CISS director said.

"Meanwhile, we should improve our technology to make it more user-friendly. I believe sports science will play an increasingly important role in China's sports development."