AP

Beijing, Oct 5: A father tied his 10-year-old daughter's hands and feet and watched her swim in a chilly southern China river for three hours in a task he said would help the girl achieve her dream of swimming across the English Channel.

Huang Li swam more than a mile in the Xiang River on Tuesday, travelling with the current, her father said. The girl swam by moving like a dolphin and would sometimes paddle with her bound hands.

"Her swimming skills are perfect and she insisted on doing this," Huang Daosheng said in a telephone interview.

The girl, who lives in the city of Zhangjiajie in Hunan province, got the idea after seeing something similar on a local television programme.

With the Beijing Olympics less than a year away, sport is grabbing greater attention in an already sports-crazed country. Huang Li's swim is at least the second time in recent months that a child athlete has drawn media attention.

This past summer, eight-year-old Zhuang Huimin ran 2,212 miles from her home on the southern island province of Hainan to Beijing in 55 days, her father trailing behind her on a motor scooter. The run drew criticism from some media commentators as excessive for a young child.