Abuse claims as Chinese girl, 8, runs 3,500 km

BEIJING, Aug 27 (Reuters) An eight-year-old Chinese girl has arrived in Beijing after state media said she ran 3,560 km (2,212 miles) to celebrate the 2008 Olympics, a feat which brought her father accusations of child abuse.

Zhang Huimin arrived yesterday after she started her extraordinary odyssey on July 3 from Sanya, at the southern tip of the island province of Hainan, with her father following her all the way on a motorised bicycle, the Beijing News said.

Zhang got up at 2.30 a.m. every day to train for the run, Xinhua news agency said, and would have had to have run about 65 km a day for 55 days -- the equivalent of about one and a half marathons a day.

Domestic media and some experts have accused the father Zhang Jianmin, a businessman, of abuse, saying such a long run would damage the girl's body and affect her growth.

''I have mixed entertainment with training for my daughter, and, plus, she loves running. I did not impose my will on her,'' her father, an amateur runner himself, was quoted as saying.

''It is worth paying the price and making sacrifices for the glory of the country.'' Zhang and his wife separated mainly because she opposed his way of training their daughter, according to the newspaper.

In June, Indian police stopped a five-year-old boy, who became a celebrity after a seven-hour run that sparked charges of abuse, from participating in a 500-km (300 mile) walking event.

REUTERS TB BD1345