WUHAN:The Olympic torch may be passed from father to son on Saturday in this city situated at the intersection of the Yangtze and Hanjiang rivers, Hubei province.

Xiao Aishan is a retired diving coach who tutored China's first Olympic diving gold medalist Zhou Jihong at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, and Fu Mingxia, who reaped four golds at three Olympic Games between 1992 and 2000.

He also coached his son, Xiao Hailiang, to gold at the Sydney Games in 2000.

"I heard my father will hand me the torch. It will be interesting," Xiao said on the sidelines of a press conference yesterday.

Xiao Hailiang is a reporter with the Hubei Daily. He retired from the national diving team in 2002.

Eight former Olympic champions will carry the torch through their hometowns in Hubei, Li Jianming, chief of the Hubei Sports Bureau, said.

Among them will be Sydney Games gymnastics champion Yang Wei, the relay's lead runner, and Li Xiaoshuang, a double gold medal winner in gymnastics at the Barcelona Games in 1992 and the Atlanta Games in 1996.

The relay will start from the Yellow Crane Tower on the southern bank of the Yangtze River.

First built in AD 223, the tower became famous after poet Cui Hao visited it in the early 8th century and wrote a poem about it. It will conclude at a site where the Yangtze and Hanjiang rivers meet.

From Wuhan the relay will go on to Yichang on Sunday and Jingzhou on Monday. Yichang lies at the eastern end of the Xiling Gorge, one of the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River.

Jingzhou is one of the oldest cities in China.

Among the 624 torchbearers will be medical workers and police officers recently returned from the earthquake regions of Sichuan, and 32 foreigners.