No Storybook Ending for China’s Hero Liu
August 20, 2008
Gerry Shih is currently in Beijing, China, documenting his experience at the Olympics for AsianWeek.
BEIJING - Just before noon on August 18, disaster struck here in Beijing. Liu Xiang, China’s hero and defending 110m hurdles gold medalist from Athens, stumbled out of the blocks in a preliminary race and walked out of the National Stadium and the Olympic Games.
In the ten days since Li Ning bounded along an unfurling scroll in midair to light the Olympic flame, the Games were unfolding flawlessly. There were no embarrassing political protests or terrorist attacks. Michael Phelps tore down the existing ceiling of human achievement and then some. The air was cool and the sky crystal blue as the Bird’s Nest began filling up for track events.
For the 1.3 billion Chinese, the stage was set for a picture perfect ending on the morning of August 21. This is how it will play out: Liu Xiang crosses 10 hurdles, runs 110 meters and beats Dayron Robles, his Cuban rival and world record holder, to the finish line in a little under 13 seconds, and he drapes the red flag over his shoulders. When a national poll last year asked the Chinese what they wanted to see most at the 2008 Olympics, the leading response was seeing Liu win the gold. Hosting a successful Games only came in fourth. That’s how important he is.
In America, where Liu is hardly known-at least until recently, when feature profiles surfaced in publications and his image appeared on Newsweek’s cover-it may be hard to imagine or understand the scene now in Beijing. For many Chinese, after the August 21 hurdles final, the Olympics were effectively over. With all of China’s traditionally strong events over, it was one of the last, and more glorious, shot at gold in these Olympics.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Liu’s stunning withdrawal has taken the wind out of the Olympics’ sails, as if the competition ended early. Spectators and security volunteers cried at the stadium. Liu’s coach broke down in tears and buried his head in his hands during a news conference afterwards. Chinese reporters cried during the conference. Fans wondered why the coaches never revealed the extent of the injury earlier. The blogosphere raged with conspiracy theories. Corporate sponsors from Coke to Nike scrambled to decide whether to retool their promotional strategies so heavily invested in Liu’s success and stardom. Olympic organizers were deprived their showcase moment. It’s hard to imagine the reaction of the thousands who bought tickets for the final on Thursday morning through official or unofficial channels, sometimes at prices equal to weeks worth of pay.
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The fallout began immediately and will continue for a long time. The Atlantic’s James Fallows wondered whether the injury was real, whether Liu had too much to lose from potentially losing to Robles. “It would be natural and human if it were more than [an injury],” he wrote. “Perhaps better not to try at all than to be captured forever on tape coming up short.”
Just hours after the news, the Chinese online community reacted angrily towards Liu’s coaches for not clarifying the extent of his injury. And then there was speculation: If Liu’s injury was known to be so severe, as it apparently was, why did he take to the track at all? The coaches offered expected answers-that Liu was a fighter who would “not withdraw unless the pain is unbearable.” But Liu appeared to kick the wall in frustration before the start of the race, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to perform. Observers noted on the Internet that there were extensive TV shots of Liu’s golden Nike spikes. Did Nike pressure Liu to appear? Memories surfaced of the 1998 World Cup final, when it was widely rumored that Nike’s hand pressured an ill and unfit Ronaldo to appear against France. The Brazilian forward looked dazed the entire match, and France won in style. The speculation gained so much traction that Ronaldo ultimately had to testify before the Brazilian senate to deny that anybody pressured him to play. Right now, China takes Liu’s hurdling just about as seriously as the Brazilians treat their national sport, so today has been highly and bizarrely emotional.
At the end of the day, on a street in West Beijing, I was enlightened by the comments of Yu, an 18-year-old basketball fan (he usually likes soccer more, but the Chinese men are just so damn terrible-more on that later-and Yao and company are making a very respectable run). The drama of it all, Yu said, lay in this: Liu and the coaches must’ve privately known beforehand that there was no way he could compete. But forget the Nike rumors. “With the entire country’s waiting for years for this moment,” Yu says, “he had to at least make an appearance.” Liu himself also trained so long for this moment. So he walked into the Bird’s Nest. He lived the brief fantasy of going through the routines, warming up and walking around, for a few more minutes still the hero of a quarter of the world. The fans watched him struggle with simple warm-ups but were complicit in the charade, cheering as Liu cocked his legs in the starting blocks. Maybe he thought he might still be hero and suppressed the deep knowledge that it would all be in vain, and when the gun sounded, reality finally caught up. With him, with his coaches, with China. Think about that story. For a country that savors its over-the-top, emotionally charged television series, the realization of this was a real life melodrama on the world’s great stage-that might be where the tears came from.
After all, James Fallows was right in one sense: we’ll never know whether or not Liu would’ve beaten Dayron Robles in front of 91,000 screaming fans on the morning of August 21. China was deprived of its storybook ending to the Olympics, but for a certain breed of romantic, after the tears have dried, this hanging conclusion might just feel infinitely more bittersweet.”
Photo by Gerry Shih
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