This Got the Chinese Crying in the Bird’s Nest

Posted in Finch Bird Sounds by: FinchBird

August 17th, 2009

It has stunned not only the Chinese people, but the whole world as Liu Xiang’s sudden painful walk-out from the 2008 Olympic Hurdles Event has deprived all of us a moment that had, since 2004 (when he won the 110m hurdles at the Athens Games), been awaited with much anticipation.

The moment everybody was waiting for is due later this week, Thursday night, the 110m hurdle finals. It was supposed to be Liu’s defending event, after winning in Athens and becoming China’s first gold medalist in track and field. This Thursday should have been that day where he would have exploded from the blocks at the sound of the gun.

It is really hard to comprehend the sense of hurt, loss and disappointment that the Chinese people feel over Liu’s Olympic exit. Images of crying Chines are now all over the internet as China’s Liu Xiang lines up to run the 110m hurdles but leaves with an Achilles injury after a false start.

This is the much-awaited scene that wont transpire anymore: The ferocious noise inside the Bird’s Nest, the flashbulbs from the stands like the countless stars in the sky, the pressure of 1.3 billion people waiting to see if he could deliver again, and finally, the affirmation of Liu, not only his place in Olympic history but China’s station as a power to be respected among the nations, sport serving as a proxy for so much else.

It was the Achilles tendon injury that sent Liu aching in pain into the tunnel. He ripped the number off his hip as he slowly walked away from the 110m hurdles preliminary heat. Immediately his right ankle was taken cared of as he sat against a wall and his face is hidden.

Liu’s plight would be analogous to this: For those who see the Olympics through an American prism, and swimmer Michael Phelps, the best bet of the United States, is mounting the blocks in his first race, diving in, taking two strokes - and pulling up, clutching the lane line. And with this imagination, let us also say that the 2008 Olympics were being held in the home country of Phelps, not Beijing. That might come close. You may even have to multiply that a few times to reach the Liu magnitude.

Now, as many may think of the deprecation of the supposed spectacle Thursday night at the Bird’s Nest, the plain truth is that spectacle is needed no more!

History is unstoppable. And it didn’t need Liu Xiang in 2008. Look at China’s performance at these Games. It has already gone well beyond anything that might have come from single athlete. The rest of the Chinese team has already put to rest any doubt there might have been about China’s ascendancy as an athletic power.

The medal count and tally boards is the pen and parchment of this history in progress. In Athens, the Chinese won 32 gold medals. Already here, they have 35 as of yesterday’s tally. In Athens, the Chinese won 63 medals overall. As of last Monday, they already have 61. American athletes and delegates were clinging to a slim lead in the overall medals count, with 65. But the Chinese were well out ahead of the Americans in the gold-medal count: 35-19.

Come to think about it, Liu did the smart thing. If he had raced and lost, he would have lost considerable face, and so - by extension - might all those counting on him and the rest of the Chinese community. And in that situation, there was no way he was going to repeat as Olympic champion.

“I think he was very courageous,” Wang Wei, the English-speaking voice of the Beijing 2008 organizing committee, said. “The entire country will be disappointed but they also understand that when someone has an injury they can not help it.”

Crying on a news conference last Monday afternoon about Liu’s exit from the Bird’s Nest is his coach and mentor, Sun Haiping, at which the former called Liu a “fighter,” adding, “He has been keeping fighting and fighting until the last moment.”

A bit of backtrack in his training: Liu hasn’t run a competitive race in three months. Liu was due to run May 31 in New York. He did not join, citing injury. Two weeks later, he false-started at a meet in Oregon. At present it seems obvious that might have been on purpose. He did not compete this year on the European circuit. Hurdles is a timing event, a rhythm event. Hurdlers need to hurdle, and Liu was not hurdling. That’s no way to get ready for the Olympic Games.

Liu had yet to chip off 13 seconds this year, or even turn in a top-10 mark — this after winning the 2007 world championships in 12.95 seconds. Worsening Liu’s plight, Cuba’s Dayron Robles took Liu’s world record, dropping the mark to 12.87 seconds.

Interviewed last Monday about Liu, Robles said he couldn’t care less. “I’m going to do what Usain Bolt did,” he said, a reference to the world-record Bolt set Sunday in the 100m, 9.69 seconds. “The track is perfect. Anything is possible in the final.”

Liu Xiang’s “anything is possible” moment came in 2004. Looking back, that suddenly seems a long time ago.

Contributed By: Bidz Dela Cruz