Even in his old age, Wu still remembers every game his team played in the qualifiers against Chile, Belgium, South Korea, the Philippines and Iraq.

To him, the last game with Iraq, in which he scored 32 points, seems like a victory that happened only yesterday.

China's 125-25 win over Iraq is one of the biggest margins in Olympic basketball history to date.

"We all believed that we would qualify for the next round with such a win," Wu says. "China and all the other qualifying groups had three wins and two defeats."

But China was eliminated because the Chinese coaches and officials had not fully understood the rules. The win against Iraq did not count under the regulations.

Ironically, the two teams that qualified - South Korea and Belgium - both lost to China in the qualifiers.

The Chinese delegation, which could not find enough money to buy air tickets home, was stuck in London after the Olympics. Chenting Wong, head of the delegation, had to raise more money for the trip home.

Wu's basketball career started by chance. As a teenager, he was asked to fill a vacancy during a game. He played so well that he became a key player for teams of pharmaceutical and tobacco companies in Shanghai before he was selected for the 1948 Olympics.

Wu recorded his Olympic experience in a diary, which was published by the daily newspaper CD News, a KMT paper that moved from Shanghai to Taiwan in 1949.

In the 1950s, Wu was recruited by the People's Liberation Army to be a basketball coach. He enjoyed training young players, but had to stop doing so during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) when he was castigated for his Olympic experience and diary.

After he retired from the army in the 1980s, Wu and his fellow Olympic teammate Li formed the Guhua Basketball Team in Shanghai in 1987. It was a team for players aged between 60 and 90 years old.

The team has toured many parts of the world and still plays every year. It also went to Taiwan in 1993 as one of the first Chinese mainland sports groups to visit the island in more than 40 years.

Still a leader of the Guhua team, Wu is proud his basketball career has spanned nearly seven decades, despite having a pacemaker now.

He also speaks with great pride about one of his sons, who has not only followed in his footsteps, but also left footprints in Chinese basketball history.

His eldest son Wu Xinshui was rated as one of the top 10 Chinese basketball players in 1980. He was the captain of the powerful Bayi team, which defeated the visiting US college all-star team twice in 1979. He was also a major player in China's national team and helped it win the 10th and 11th Asian Basketball Championships.

Apart from Olympic basketball, octogenarian Wu also follows a lot of NBA and Chinese Basketball Association games. He is delighted that Chinese players Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian are playing in the NBA, but says: "Besides his height advantage, Yao could develop other strengths to become a real big star in (the) NBA."

Even compared to big-time players like Yao today, Wu says he feels proud to have contributed to Chinese Olympic history.

"From Liu Changchun as China's lone athlete at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, to the current massive Chinese delegation of hundreds of athletes, everyone counts," he says.