Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney has been reticent, when asked this week, about getting involved in the row over US Olympic uniforms being made in China.

Susan Bonfield, a former torch carrier for the quadrennial winter version of the event, may have the answer to his reluctance: the row is similar to an even more embarrassing episode in the run-up to the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Romney was president of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and touts it as one of the big successes of his career. A regular attendee at Olympic events since 2002, he is scheduled to visit London for the Games.

Bonfield, 57, who lives in Washington DC, was a US torchbearer at the Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City. She was outraged when she discovered, after receiving the uniform in December 2001, that the label said it had been made in Burma, at the time a pariah state run by a military dictatorship.

In an interview with the Guardian, she said: "When I looked at the label for the uniform, I went nuts. When you are sending work representing the US to a military dictatorship, I have an issue with that."

Bonfield said that after discovering the label on trousers and a lightweight jacket, she sent an anonymous postcard to a Burmese democratic group informing them.

Trade unions, human rights groups and others protested over the link to the then-isolationist state.

ABC reported last week that the Olympic uniforms of the US team for 2012 were made in China, prompting an outcry among members of Congress that they should have been made in the US.

The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, said the Olympic committee should be ashamed. "I think they should take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile and burn them and start all over again," he told a press conference.

Romney, when asked in an interview with ABC on Friday about the China link, said: "I'm not going to get into the uniform issue. There are big issues associated with the Olympics: the security of the games, the readiness of our athletes, and that's what I'm going to focus on, hopefully when I get to cheer on the people who are going to be supporting and representing our country."

An Obama administration official, Josh Earnest, was a little more forthcoming. He told reporters: "Maybe for future Olympics, those kinds of things should be considered."