At the Beijing Games, the focus will be on China’s superstar Liu Xiang, who will defend his Olympics 110m hurdles title. And equally important will be the performances of swimmer Michael Phelps and pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva. Will Phelps better Mark Spitz? And will Isinbayeva go for another world record? By K. P. Mohan.
China is set to host a most memorable Olympic Games. It is also poised to top the medals tally for the first time ever in its Olympic history, if forecasts and media analyses are to be believed. Yet, nothing else will perhaps matter for the Chinese if Liu Xiang wins the high hurdles gold at the Bird’s Nest National Stadium in Beijing.
If he doesn’t, well it will be equivalent to a mourning period for a country of 1.3 billion.
Can just one gold medal make such a huge difference to the aspirations and joy of a nation that has worked so hard the past seven years to try and make this Games a huge success and also steadily climbed up the medals ladder since rejoining the Olympic Movement in 1979? (China actually came back into the summer Olympics fold only in Los Angeles in 1984, having boycotted the Moscow Games in 1980).
Yes, it can.Liu Xiang today is the ‘face of Chinese sports’, even overshadowing the basketball star Yao Ming (who reportedly earns $54.6 million a year) at least during the build-up to the Olympics.
Tickets for the 110m hurdles final on August 21 are reportedly going for 20 times the face value; all of China wants to see its track superstar defend his Olympic title at home, forgetting the medals in shooting, weightlifting, diving, gymnastics, badminton, table tennis and taekwondo. All those medals will come anyway; but the 110m hurdles gold is going to be very special, more than what it was when Liu Xiang won in Athens.
What must be going through Liu Xiang’s mind now as he trains for the most important goal in his career, at an undisclosed venue in China, away from the glare of the media and adoring fans?
The best can crack under pressure; the ones who conquer pressure conquer the world, too.
“I have to be calm to be able to face the pressure,” Liu Xiang told the media last May in New York where he eventually pulled out of the Reebok Grand Prix because of a hamstring strain.
With just two competitions this season, Osaka and Beijing, both in May, where he won, Liu Xiang is not actually primed to tackle Dayron Robles, who snatched the world record from him with a time of 12.87s in Ostrava in June. The plus point for the 25-year-old Chinese is that he has a 6-3 career record against the Cuban and would be performing in front of 91,000 screaming fans.
The Liu Xiang-Robles duel is just one of the key showdowns that is eagerly awaited at the Beijing Games. There are others, like the men’s sprint contest between Asafa Powell, Usain Bolt and World champion Tyson Gay; the men’s 400m battle between Americans Jeremy Wariner and LaShawn Merritt; the men’s sprint relay contest between the US and Jamaican teams; the Michael Phelps-Ian Crocker face-off in the 100m butterfly in the swimming pool, the Phelps v Ryan Lochte showdown in the medleys; an endless list really.
The sprint showdown has been nicely woven around two Jamaicans and an American. Former Olympic champion and World record holder Donovan Bailey and former Olympic medallist Ato Boldon both favour Bolt to win in Beijing. The bookmakers too have given Bolt, aged 21, the edge, with Gay in second place and Powell third.
Bolt’s world record of 9.72 in New York in May was an astonishing feat by someone who does not have much experience in the 100 metres, though he is an acknowledged 200-metre runner and should start clear favourite in the latter event in Beijing.
Powell, with a best of 9.82s for the season, has won three straight titles on the Grand Prix circuit while Gay has nursed a hamstring strain since missing the 200 in the US Olympics trials in Eugene. If Bolt can match Powell off the blocks, he will be hard to beat, experts predict. Gay’s fitness will count if he has to score. Powell should be hungry for a global title.
On the track, we could possibly see an athlete from the strife-torn Sudan winning an Olympic medal. Abubaker Kaki Khamis, just 19, is an All-African and Pan-Arab champion in the 800 metres. He has the season best time of 1:42.69 (Oslo, June 6). Winning won’t be easy, but he can at least hope to get a medal and if he does that it will be a ‘first’ for Sudan.
Winning will be routine for someone else. Yelena Isinbayeva looks unbeatable in pole vault, no matter Jennifer Stuczynski has raised the American record to 4.92 metres. Isinbayeva continues to be in a class of her own. The 26-year-old Russian set her 24th world record (14th outdoors) when she sailed over 5.04m in Monte Carlo on July 29. Unless she bungles badly at a particular height — the great Sergey Bubka no-heighted in the Barcelona Games — there is no way the Russian pin-up star can miss her second Olympic title. Last time she had won with a world record 4.91; in Beijing, she looks ready to go for another world record.
Shifting our focus from athletics to swimming, another sport that offers plenty of medals, all eyes will be on Michael Phelps as he goes for Mark Spitz’s record haul of seven gold medals, achieved in Munich in 1972. Phelps fell short of just one gold medal in equalling the record in the last Olympics. The American’s Olympic saga, which began at the age of 15 in Sydney eight years ago, looks set to reach a landmark. Spitz is on record that Phelps can match him or better his seven-gold-feat.
Phelps will go for gold in 200m freestyle, 100m and 200m butterfly, 200m and 400m individual medleys and three relays. He holds world records in all the above individual events except 100m butterfly. It is in the 100m butterfly that team-mate Ian Crocker comes in. Crocker holds the world record (50.40s) here, but lost in the Olympic trials to Phelps.
Swimming will not be all about Phelps; it will be about the traditional US-Australian rivalry, especially in the women’s section. It will be about Australian Stephanie Rice and American Katie Hoff in the medleys, about Australian Libby Trickett aiming for five gold medals, about American Natalie Coughlin, the back-stroke specialist, targeting six medals, about Australian Grant Hackett aiming an unprecedented third Olympic gold in the 1500 metres freestyle. Not forgetting, there will be South African amputee Natalie du Toit attempting a medal in the 10km open water event.
Another ‘Dream Team’ is in the making as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and the rest of the NBA superstars make an attempt to regain the basketball supremacy that the US must so desperately be seeking. The NBA stars should be a great draw in Beijing. But Yao Ming will tower over them when the host plays.
Likewise, Lin Dan should call the shots in men’s badminton apart from the rest of the team adding to the medal collection. China should also be hoping to retain the women’s doubles title in tennis apart from dominating a few traditionally strong disciplines like diving and women’s weightlifting.
Could it be another Federer-Nadal final in men’s tennis? Or will Novak Djokovic get into the act? We will have to wait and see.
We will also have to wait for a decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to see whether Lionel Messi will turn out for Argentina. Olympic football is normally a poor cousin to the World Cup, but this time, if Messi is around, with Ronaldinho in the Brazilian team, things could liven up.
Perhaps there could be a couple of last-minute appeals by the Russian athletes also. Seven of the Russian women athletes were provisionally suspended by the IAAF for manipulation of urine samples. The batch included two-time world 1500m champion and Athens Olympics silver medallist Tatyana Tomashova and Yelena Soboleva, the silver winner in the metric mile at the last World Championships and one of the favourites for the 800 in Beijing.
IOC President Jacques Rogge has stated that there could well be more dope ‘positives’ than in Athens. Beijing is geared to catch the ‘cheats’. It is waiting with bated breath to hear the starter’s gun in the 110m hurdles final on August 21.
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