“It’s a miracle,” says Liu Xiang | NEWS | World Athletics (2024)

22yearold Liu Xiang scored an incredible win topped by an equalled World record in the 110m Hurdles in Athens. The most sensational Chinese talent of the 21st century, Xiang became the first man from his country to win an Olympic track and field gold medal. By Laura Arcoleo

Impassive and unshakeable, Liu Xiang is the image of determination. Standing behind his starting blocks meticulously set in lane four, the 21-year-old Chinese knows he is only 110 metres away from glory, ten barriers away from a place in history.

In nine participations at the Summer Olympic Games, no Chinese male athlete had ever won a gold medal in track and field. One has to go as far back as 1984 to find Zhu Jianhua’s bronze medal in the High Jump as the last Olympic medal for a Chinese male athlete.

A former high jumper himself, Xiang is about to set the record straight in Athens. Coming into his first Olympic final, his confidence boosted by a blossoming year which has seen him take the World Indoor silver medal in March and twice set a 13.06 Asian record, Xiang has also experience on his side.

Despite his very young age, the Shanghai-born athlete has proven he has the nerves for handling a major championships final. Since his semi-final elimination at the World Championships in Edmonton 2001, Xiang has never missed out on a global final, and a podium for that matter!

In 2003, he took two bronze medals at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham, and then in Paris at the World Outdoors. In Budapest he went one step higher and took silver. On all three occasions, the champion was the USA’s Allen Johnson, who incidentally is also the only man to defeat Xiang in 2004.

With the absence of four-time World champion Johnson in the final, following his second-round fall, there seems to be nothing, bar disaster, that could prevent Xiang from re-writing the history of track and field.

The sound of the gun at 9.30pm on this Friday evening marked not only the start of one of the finest races of the Olympic Games, but also the beginning of a new era. The era of Liu Xiang.

Blasting out of the blocks, tantalisingly close to the gun, Xiang executed a perfect technical race and stormed through the finish line in an equalling World record performance 12.91.

Xiang had just become the first male athlete to win a track and field gold medal for China!

Although Xiang is one not likely to put himself under pressure, he was awesome in fulfilling all the expectations. He mastered the final from gun to tape, didn’t falter, pushed his efforts right to the finish, and celebrated like a teenager would do when the scoreboard converted the initial 12.94 to an official 12.91.

“Before the final I knew a lot of people were expecting me to do well, but I never thought I would win a medal. I never allowed any of those thoughts in my head,” said Xiang.

“I just wanted to perform at my best and raise my technique to the best level. I was confident that if I succeeded in doing so I would have a chance of entering the top three. The gold medal was not the least expected. It was a huge surprise for me. Just as huge a surprise as running under 13 seconds for the first time was.”

“Given the Asian physiology, few expected that a Chinese would ever be able to run under 13 seconds. I believe this is like a sort of miracle. What has happened is incredible, but I will keep on working very hard in the future, and you can expect more miracles to happen.”

The World record-equalling time of 12.91 may have come as a surprise to the 70,000 spectators in the Athens Olympic stadium, but Xiang’s win was somehow anticipated. At least it was not unexpected, as the young prodigy has made steady progress to rise to the top, and be regarded as one of the major forces in sprint hurdling.

When he was younger, the feats of table tennis star Deng Yaping - who won gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics - used to inspire him, and he would dream of emulating them.

Xiang was selected to the Junior Sports School of Putuo District of Shanghai, to practice high jumping as a fourth grader in the primary school. But after a bone test showed that he would not grow much taller, he was asked to give up sports. His mother Ji Fenhua and his father Lin Xuegen, a taxi driver, also wanted him to study computer engineering, or some other profession befitting his middle-class Shanghai upbringing, but Liu decided to go on.

He chose the hurdles, he says, because they involved elements of science that other events lacked.

Liu started serious training for the 110m Hurdles in 1999, and after three months he had already clocked 14.13.

“When I started to train seriously, my dad was supportive. But, like most mothers I guess, my mum was against the idea. She wanted me to study. But, after I began to have some success, she came to accept my decision to be a competitive athlete. Now both my parents support me a lot.”

Very soon Xiang was taking part in his first major international competition, as he was selected to represent China at the 2000 IAAF World Junior Championships in Santiago de Chile. The teenager was a disappointing fourth in the 110m Hurdles final, when the day before he had superbly won his semi-final heat in a new national Junior record 13.75.

Despite missing out on the medals, and his presence going somewhat unnoticed, it was clear that Xiang had what it takes to become a champion.

The world of track and field wasn’t going to take much longer to notice him.

It was a cold summer evening in Lausanne, Switzerland on Tuesday 2 July 2002. Standing behind the starting blocks, ready to compete in his first European Grand Prix meeting the then 18-year-old Xiang was looking straight at the finish line, concentrating on the task ahead of him.

In Lausanne Xiang was running in the ‘B’ race – not able to be given a lane in the main race, which offered a star-studded field with World record holder Colin Jackson, four-time World champion Allen Johnson, Olympic champion Anier Garcia, European silver medallist Stanislavs Olijars, and Olympic silver medallist Terrence Trammell.

Xiang knew it was his chance to show his idols what a fantastic up-and-coming athlete he was, and he didn’t miss his chance as, assisted by a 1.6m/s tail wind he set a new World Junior record of 13.12. In breaking Renaldo Nehemiah’s mark, which had stood as the best-ever Junior time since 1978, Xiang was now part of the elite.

Incidentally, he defeated 1996 Olympic silver medallist Mark Crear, and Florian Schwartoff who had been third in Atlanta. Not bad for a first Grand Prix meeting.
After the race, Xiang went up to Allen Johnson (his all-time favourite and idol), and asked for his autograph, unaware that two years later he would be the one to sign tonnes of autographs.

When Xiang and Johnson raced each other at the Rome Golden League meeting earlier this summer, the American declared, “Xiang has an excellent technique. He is very strong and very fast. He is so young and is very ambitious. I think he will do very well in the future.”

Shortly after breaking the World Junior record, Xiang had been questioned about his expectations for the future, and his answer was remarkably down-to-earth.

“A top-8 placing in the Olympics will be great”.

Winner of the ‘A’ race in Lausanne, Anier Garcia remembers the evening very well.

“Ever since he set that World Junior record, I’ve been watching him,” said Garcia three weeks before the Olympic Games “I remember that night very well. I won the ‘A’ race and he took the ‘B’ race. I remember looking at the clock and saying, ‘WOW… 13.12! Who is that guy?’”

“Since then, I knew he would do well,” concluded Garcia.

Fast forward to Athens and Xiang didn’t just do well he did GREAT!

“It is an amazing experience being the Olympic champion. I want to thank my coach and my friends for all their help. I think today the Chinese people showed the world that they can run as fast as anybody else. Still it feels like a kind of miracle.”

“I am very excited that the next Olympic Games will be held in China. I am confident that the Beijing Games will be the most successful ones. For sure the organisation will be one of the best.”

Together with the other 31 Olympic gold medallists, Xiang was welcomed back home like a true hero. He was greeted at Beijing airport by a senior party leader, a brass band and a traditional drum and cymbal troop, as well as crowds of well-wishers.

“He is a hero, he is the pride of the whole of China,” said Luo Chaoyi, General Secretary of the Athletic Association of the People’s Republic of China.

Xiang came into the Athens Olympic Games carrying the country’s best hopes for gold. Undoubtedly he will be the centre-stage athlete when the Games move on from Athens, and the build-up preparation for Beijing 2008 gets underway.

“In China we have excellent relationships between athletes and coach. I hope my result today will change the general attitude, and it will stop people from thinking that Asians cannot be successful sprinters and hurdlers. I want Asians to be considered as good as American and European sprinters, and I will train even harder to prove yet and again that there is plenty of talent in China.”

China’s medal tally at the Olympic Games amounted to 3 gold, 3 silver and 5 bronze medals before the Athens Olympic Games, but no gold had ever been won by a male athlete, let alone a male sprinter.

“As far as I am concerned, I will be 26 years old then (Beijing 2008), and 26 is the optimal age for an athlete. It is a golden age, and I will make sure I will not miss such a huge opportunity to perform well in my home country.”

Beijing 2008, the countdown has started.

Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 3 - 2004

“It’s a miracle,” says Liu Xiang | NEWS | World Athletics (2024)
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