"A beautiful accident" – Liu presents Daegu 2011 running spike to the MOWA

It was the moment redemption beckoned for Liu Xiang. Three long years after being cruelly cut down by injury at his home Olympic Games, the Chinese sporting icon had a global gold medal within his grasp as he cleared the penultimate flight in the 110m hurdles final at the 2011 World Athletics Championships in Daegu.

Having fought his way back from the achilles tendon injury that struck before he could reach the first hurdle in his heat in Beijing in 2008 – and having hauled himself level with, then marginally ahead of Dayron Robles at the business end of the final in South Korea – the steaming Shanghai Express looked unstoppable.

Just then, however, Liu’s gold medal charge was cruelly derailed.

He was shunted back into third place and ultimately had to settle for the silver medal, yet still looks back on that 2011 race – from which he has kindly chosen to donate the left shoe he wore to the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA) – with fondness and not a little satisfaction. 

But, then, this is the man who carried the hopes of a nation on his shoulders – a nation of 1.3 billion – all the way from his world record-equalling victory in the 110m hurdles as part of the No.1 Olympic sport at the 2004 Games in Athens to the crushing blow he suffered in the Bird’s Nest Stadium. The defending champion, China’s golden boy, hobbled out of the packed arena in tears, leaving his coach to issue an official apology to the Chinese people. 

“I would have won the gold medal”

As well as learning how to beat the rest of the world, and how to run his way into the world record book, Liu discovered an awful lot about perspective during his professional life in the fast lane.

A less philosophical soul might reflect on having been impeded at such the decisive stage of that 2011 World Championships final with some bitterness. Not Liu Xiang.

He prefers to think of the silver medal he ultimately gained from the race, a hard-won reward for all of the toil he invested on the long comeback trail.

Watching the replay now, 12 years on from the Daegu final, Liu makes up the best part of a metre on Robles, the Cuban who succeeded him as Olympic champion in Beijing, and has the momentum with him as he edges ahead at the ninth flight.

But then Robles’ right palm catches his left hand and Liu momentarily jolts. Their hands clash again as they negotiate the 10th and final flight. 

Liu knocks down the barrier and fades back to third place, crossing the line in 13.27. Robles holds off the fast-finishing Jason Richardson, finishing 0.02 ahead of the US hurdler in 13.14, but then finds himself disqualified for obstruction. 

The somewhat bewildered Richardson is upgraded to gold and Liu to silver. Britain’s Andy Turner takes the bronze. 

In the immediate aftermath in Daegu, Liu was unable to conceal his frustration. “Robles hit me twice,” he said. “It was unintentional but if that had not happened I would have won the gold medal.”

Six months later, he was more sanguine. 

“I always describe that incident as ‘a beautiful accident’,” Lui reflected. “The 110m hurdles outdoors and the 60m hurdles indoors are intensely competitive events.  Accidents can always happen.

“I had to train very hard to come back from the injury I suffered in 2008. It meant a lot to win a silver medal at the World Championships in Daegu.”

Sadly, it was to be Lui’s last podium placing at a global championships outdoors. 

Starting a new journey

Building on his silver from Daegu, he finished runner up to the emerging Aries Merritt of the US at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Istanbul in March 2012 but suffered further heartbreak when he stepped back on to the Olympic stage in London later that year.

In a haunting repeat of Beijing, he ruptured the same achilles tendon in attempting to clear the first hurdle in his first round heat. This time he hopped to the finish line, before collapsing and making a mournful exit from the arena in a wheelchair.

After surgery, Liu tried to make another comeback. Last time round, a year before he made it on to the podium in Daegu, the first major step on his journey was the 2010 Asian Games on home ground in Guangdong. In front of a 70,000-strong Chinese crowd, he won in a Games record time of 13.09.

After London, his sights were set on an emotional return to the Bird’s Nest for the 2015 World Athletics Championships. He made it back to the training track but never raced again, announcing his retirement in April 2015.

“I need to start a new journey,” Liu said. “I am truly unwell and old and can no longer run and jump with you. 

“Although it’s sad, although it’s painful, I really have no other choice. My foot told me no again and again. There was no way I was going to be able to handle intense training and competition.

“I hate my foot. I love my track and my hurdles so much, but I am injured and can only accept this.”

Despite the anguish of the previous seven years, Liu could still reflect with pride on a career that took him to the very pinnacle of the high hurdles game.

From high jump to hurdles

The son of a Shanghai truck driver, he won a national age group title as a high jumper before switching to the hurdles when bone tests suggested he would not grow tall enough to become a world class competitor in his first-choice track and field discipline.

Ironically, when Liu became Olympic 110m hurdles champion in 2004, a month past his 21st birthday, he was 6ft 2 ½ in (1.89m) – significantly taller than the high jump gold medal winner in Athens, the 5ft 11in (1.81m) Swede Stefan Holm.

His initial breakthrough came in 2002, when he clocked 13.12 in Lausanne, setting an Asian record and breaking the 25-year-old world U20 record held by the celebrated US high hurdles practitioner Renaldo ‘Skeets’ Nehemiah. 

Then followed world outdoor bronze in Paris in 2003 and world indoor silver in Budapest in March of 2004 – five months before Liu’s speed and razor-sharp technique propelled him to Olympic gold in Athens in 12.91, equalling the 11-year-old world record held by Britain’s Colin Jackson. It was China’s first success in a men’s track and field event in Olympic history.

After taking world outdoor silver behind France’s Ladji Doucoure in Helsinki in 2005, Liu claimed the world record outright in 2006, blasting to a 12.88 clocking in Lausanne. 

He found his Midas touch at the 2007 outdoor World Championships in Osaka and at the 2008 World Indoor Championships in Valencia. Then, crushingly, his achilles tendon failed him in the cauldron of a home Olympics.

“Wherever I go, everybody wants to ask about the Olympics in Beijing,” Liu lamented. “Of course, it was sad for me at the time, but what happened was really not so special. Every athlete has injury in his or her career. 

“I prefer to think of other things than to dwell on what happened in 2008. I did win the 110m hurdles gold medal at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004.”

Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage