Liu Xiang did it in Athens3 , and history’s been made.
The 21 -year-old claimed the gold medal of the glamorous4 men’s 110m hurldes before a capacity crowd of 70 ,000 at the Olympic Stadium in the 28th Olympic Games in Athens late Friday local time.
He clocked a stunning 12. 91 seconds to equal the world record set by Britain’s Collin Jackson5 in 1993.
Chinese fans in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai burst into hysteria6 and many cried out when the national television station CCTV broadcast the event live , when brave Liu Xiang dashed to the line in arms and legs far ahead of his rivals, in the early hours Saturday morning Beijing time.
It is the first gold Chinese men’s athlete ever won from the track and field in the Olympics history.
China has won over 1 00 gold medals from the summer Olympic Games since 1984 but their male athletes only got one medal from Olympics’ most popular sport. That was high jumper Zhu Jianhua’s7 bronze in the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
The Shanghai native, with his father a truck driver and mother an out-of-work housewife, loved sports when he was very little.
"He kept running and jumping everyday and never sat there quietly," his mother Ji Fenhua recalled.
Liu was selected to the Junior Sports School of Putuo District of Shanghai to practice jumping as a fourth grader in the primary school. But after a bone test showing that he will not be able to become a tall man, Liu was asked to give up sports one year later, although he had won the national champion at that level.
His parents also wanted him to study computer engineering or some other profession befitting8 his middle-class Shanghai upbringing9, but Liu decided to goon.
"I told my mother that I would compete in the Olympics in the future," Liu said.
The year of 1998 was a turning point for Liu’ s career, when he attracted coach Sun Haiping’s attention as a 15-year-old jumper.
Sun was a well-known hurdle coach who had nurtured Asian champion Chen Yanhao and he believed a star was born at the first sight of Liu10. He visited Liu’s parents serveral times and finally persuaded them to let Liu transfer to the 110m hurdles.
After only three years, Liu launched his career in style in the IAAF" Grand Prix in Lausanne12 in 2001 by breaking the world youth and Asian record with a time of 13.12.
But the first warning he sent to the world was his bronze-winning feat at the world indoor championships in Birmingham, England, last year13.
He went on to capture the bronze in the world outdoor championships in Paris to record a surprise season in 2003.
In 2004, Liu came back stronger and more confident. He won the silver in the world indoor championships in Budapest14 in March.
The world has put the Olympics a Johsnon-Liu duel but surprisingly Johnson crashed out of the Games after falling at the ninth hurdle at round 2.
Johnson’s early exit paved the way for15 Liu’s win. He finally took the gold and put a Chinese man’s name on the record book.