Liu Xiang en route to his first world title (© Getty Images)
It hardly needs saying that Liu Xiang is under a bit of pressure. Of all the events at these Olympic Games none will define sporting success for the home nation more than the men’s 110m Hurdles final on Thursday night (21).
With the Olympic dreams of 1.3 billion people hanging on his every move, the defending champion has a world to win, and everything to lose. Few athletes in history have experienced anything like it.
Even losing his World record earlier this season to Cuba’s Dayron Robles will hardly lift the burden of expectation heaped on his 25-year-old shoulders by the home country. Indeed, according to Britain’s Colin Jackson, the man who preceded Liu as World record holder, it can only add weight.
“It’s the last thing he will have wanted,” says Jackson. “Having the World record gives you confidence. It means you can go on the line and think to yourself, ‘You know what, if I run to my very best I will be the champion.’
“That gives you a lot of confidence. Now, he knows if Robles runs his very best, the Cuban can beat him.”
There’s a lot hanging on 12.90 seconds
Jackson may never have been the home nation favourite at the biggest sports festival in the world, and never won Olympic gold. But as a double World champion, and the man who held the record for 13 years until Liu broke it in 2006, he is well placed to assess Liu’s ability to take the pressure.
“A lot of people can win,” he says. “There’s really only one person who can lose this race, and that’s Liu Xiang. That’s incredible pressure for the young man.”
“Unfortunately, when you are carrying the hopes of a whole nation, you can’t really get away from it. Everywhere he goes there are always Chinese people. He cannot hide from them. He knows he is such a big star and cannot get away from that.”
“Now, if he wins, he can do anything he wants for the rest of his days. If he loses, things might be very, very different. So there’s a lot hanging on 12.90 seconds.
The hurdles themselves can be a mental as well as physical barrier
According to Jackson, even the pressure on Cathy Freeman because of her iconic role at the Sydney Games eight years ago is nothing compared to the weight Liu is carrying.
Jackson knew Freeman well in the run-up to the 2000 Olympics, seeing her often in Australia where he was training earlier that year, and training with her at the UK Athletics High Performance centre in Bath, Jackson’s base and Freeman’s summer hideaway from the obsessed Australian media.
“That was under very similar circumstances,” he says. “Cathy was going through a lot of personal problems and I understood the pressure she was under.”
“But in that event, if you are the fastest, there are very few things that can go wrong. If you are the best nothing’s going to get in the way, you are just going to win.
“But in the high hurdles, even if you’re the fastest going into the race, things can still go wrong.”
When the tension mounts, the height of the hurdles themselves can be a mental as well as physical barrier, he says. “You see the height of those suckers? They are not only high, they are very heavy.
“When you are under a little bit of pressure and you can’t get out of the way quickly enough, they are going to bite you. So you only need to make a mistake on one of those suckers and its race over.
“There’s a technical aspect to it as well as psychological and physical. The high hurdles is an event where you’ve got to be relaxed and silky smooth. A lot of people think it’s easy because when you are very good at something you make it look easy.
“Liu’s a very balletic hurdler, a skillful hurdler. So the nation will be quite unforgiving if he makes a mistake under pressure and loses the race.”
Rare feat being attempted
As if all that wasn’t enough to cast doubt on Liu’s chances, the Chinese superstar also knows he’s attempting a rare feat in seeking to retain his title. As Jackson points out, only two other people in Olympic history have ever defended the 110m Hurdles crown, both Americans, Lee Calhoun in 1960 and Roger Kingdom in 1988.
“With those hurdles in front of you, and with five people around you who could possibly take the gold medal if they all run well, then it is literally going to be a proper gladiators’ battle.”
Pressure seems to bring out the best in people
Steve Ovett, another British star of the past, can remember his own gladiatorial battles in the heat of the Olympic cauldron. Ovett entered the 1980 Games in Moscow as favourite for the men’s 1500m, with his arch rival Seb Coe the man expected to beat him in the 800m. Famously, they won each other’s events.
But Ovett is less sympathetic to Liu’s predicament, claiming pressure is simply what it’s all about, especially in sprint events.
“Other things come into play with middle distance races – tactics and all sorts of other things – so it doesn’t always work out the way it’s supposed to,” he comments.
“From what I’ve experienced it seems that pressure seems to bring out the best in people. Look at Cathy. And Seb and I were certainly under it in Moscow. If it’s your home crowd, which it is for Liu, then, yes, there’s immense pressure.
“But it’s like playing a game of football on your home turf with the whole crowd cheering you on. I think that is a positive thing, and a negative for all the other athletes. They are going to walk out and hear that noise and think ‘This guy is immortal.’ “
“I would say that that is what he’s trained for. That’s his game, it’s his profession, and if he can’t do it, he wouldn’t have been good in the past.”
“Far be it for me to disagree with one of the world’s greatest 110m Hurdlers, but I don’t think having the World record off his back is a bad thing. I know he has to face Robles, he’s got 10 flights of hurdles, and all that, but he’s one of the greatest hurdlers in the world.”
At shortly after 9.35 on Thirsday night, he could be one of the greatest hurdlers ever. And if he can handle the pressure, he’ll be a Chinese hero for the rest of his life.
Matthew Brown for the IAAF
