China is once again looking to its hurdling hero, Liu Xiang, to bear the weight of national expectation. But the pressure could not be greater — with questions about his fitness and fears about the growing stature of the opposition. By Jonathan Watts.
For a fraction under 13 seconds at 9.45 p.m. on August 21, China will be arguably more united than at any time in its 5,000-year history. Barring injury, disqualification or a sudden collapse of form, this is when the nation’s biggest sporting hero, Liu Xiang, will defend a title that it was once thought Asia could never win: the 110m hurdles.
As the events in Tibet and elsewhere this year have shown, uniting a country as vast as China is not easy but Liu’s bid for a second Olympics win looks set to be one of those moments in the history of televised sport, when almost an entire nation is joined together by airwaves, pixels and emotion.
From 9 p.m. local time the better half of a population of 1.3 billion people will start tuning in to CCTV5, the state broadcaster’s sports channel. By the time the starting gun fires, Shanghai socialites, Sichuanese farmers, Guangdong factory workers and perhaps even some Tibetan monks and Mongolian nomads will be huddled around television sets to see if Liu can repeat a feat that — more than any other — announced China’s arrival on the world sporting stage. The 110m hurdles gold was once the preserve of black Americans and Europeans, who were thought to have more power and technique than Asians. But in Athens in 2004 Liu changed all that. In a transcendental performance he achieved what no Chinese man had previously managed — a gold on the track, matching Colin Jackson’s 11-year-old world record and, for good measure, beating an American, Terrence Trammell, into second place.
At the time Liu said his performance was a stereotype buster. “I want to prove to all the world that Asians can run very fast,” he said. “I am a Chinese and considering the physiology of the Chinese people, it is something unbelievable.”
There was no complaint from Jackson, who praised Liu’s hurdling style as “silky”. Since then Liu has entered the celebrity stratosphere. He is the country’s greatest sporting hero, so much so that he is often described as China’s David Beckham. But this is an understatement: Liu’s fame is not cosmetic; he has actually won something for his country.
According to Wang Xiaoshan, of ‘Sports Illustrated’, Liu is on the frontline of a 30-year campaign to rebuild national confidence. “Until 1978 China was a closed country that thought it was doing well. Then we opened the door and suddenly realised we were poor and backward. It was a huge blow to national pride. To rebuild confidence, the government focused on sport. In the early Eighties the victory of the women’s volleyball team in the World Championship was a huge lift. Then we saw Chinese victories in many other events. But there was one area where it seemed we would never break through — men’s athletics. Here we failed again and again until Liu came through and changed everything.”
Sohu.com sports journalist Ye Tao agrees: “Liu Xiang is extremely popular because he proved that the yellow race is not inferior to any other.”
To whet the appetite further, the 110m hurdles in Beijing has the potential to be one of the great showdowns of sporting history. Barring a calamity, Liu will go head to head in the final with his biggest rival, Dayron Robles of Cuba.
Liu will have the advantage of home territory and the support of a crowd of 81,000 adoring fans. But on this year’s form, Robles is the favourite. In June Robles poured over the hurdles in Ostrava, Czech Republic, to set a world record of 12.87 seconds, trimming a hundredth of a second off Liu’s two-year-old mark. To show it was no fluke, he ran 12.88 a month later in France.
Robles set the stage for an epic Olympic encounter. “It’s such a good time; I wasn’t expecting that,” he said. “Wow! I do not know if I can beat Liu Xiang in Beijing now. But we will see.” Liu meanwhile has been struggling with a sore hamstring, which is becoming almost as talked about in China as Beckham’s metatarsal once was in England. At a warm-up event on the Bird’s Nest track in May he appeared to be over the worst. Against a weak field Liu was imperious. After one false start he burst free of the competition within three hurdles and then cruised fluidly to victory amid a burst of camera flashes from around the track.
Afterwards he gave the thumbs up to the new track and told the Guardian he was not weighed down by the weight of expectations. “I do not feel any pressure. The best way to relieve pressure is to rest well and eat well.” But at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, in June, he was disqualified for false starting. His coach, Sun Haiping, said Liu was simply too eager to return to top form but there was inevitable speculation that the burden of the hopes of 1.3 billion people was taking a psychological toll. Whatever the reason, Liu will go into the Olympics without one top-level race this year.
Can he still win? Wang says maybe. “I would give him a 50 per cent chance. He is in good condition but Robles is in even better shape. Liu has the advantage of competing on home territory. For some this might be too much pressure but Liu is mentally strong. He is healthy and outgoing. The pressure won’t be a problem.”
Liu, of course, is not the only athlete under pressure. Since returning to the Olympics in 1984, China has steadily climbed up the medal table. In Los Angeles the world’s most populous nation — then still impoverished and still recovering from the Cultural Revolution — managed 15 gold medals in a competition weakened by the boycott of the Soviet Union. Building first on traditional strengths in table tennis and badminton, the All China Sports Federation focused effectively on technical events, such as diving and shooting, to push up the medal count. With the help of a network of specialised sports schools, some of which train children from as young as six, their programme has been hugely successful. In terms of golds China was fourth in Atlanta, third in Sydney, second in Athens and now on home territory, few doubt they will complete the sequence.
That the Chinese team will top the gold medal table for the first time in history is now taken for granted, the only debate is the degree of dominance. Websites devoted to the topic suggest 40 is considered the minimum acceptable number of golds, while 50 would take China into dreamland.
But Liu’s case is special. There is also a taller, richer sports star in the 7ft 6in Yao Ming, the NBA basketball hero. But he is very unlikely to win an Olympic medal. Liu, by contrast, has it all. He is a proven champion in an exciting event.
Born in Shanghai in 1983 to a working-class family, Liu is very much the face that modern China would like to present to the world. He is tall — 6ft 2½in — dresses elegantly, speaks confidently and has consistently proved himself capable of leaving the competition in his slipstream.
His fans are legion. The members of the Liu Xiang supporters’ club are known as Xiangmi, a pun on the athlete’s name and fragrant rice. One of the most enthusiastic is Se Se, a 23-year-old office clerk. “He has realised the dream of every generation of Chinese athletes,” she gushes. “Yet he remains very low-key, never shows off and doesn’t talk about his personal life in public. He has made a deep impression on Chinese people’s hearts.”
Naturally this symbol of world-class success is as much sought after by corporate sponsors. Liu has so many commercial deals, including Nike, Visa, Coca-Cola and Cadillac, that his face beams down from advertising hoardings even in the remotest corners of China.
A natural athlete, Liu was enrolled in a sports school during his early teens and initially marked out as a high jumper. He excelled in that, winning the national title at this first attempt. But it was meeting the hurdling coach Sun Haiping that made him a global champion. Within three years of starting the event he won the East Asian Games and the World University Games. Improvement was rapid. In Athens he smashed his personal best time by a fifth of a second.
Given the way he rose to the occasion in 2004, and again in the athletics World Championships last year, Liu is capable of lifting himself to a new peak at the Bird’s Nest on the 21st. All he has to overcome are 10 hurdles, 110metres of track and the weight of 1.3 billion expectations.
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