In the musty shell of a hangar in Beijing, the biggest star in China has 20
kilos and the weight of 1.3 billion people on his shoulders. He completes
his training drill, smiles and says he does not want to spend his whole life
like this. Locked away from his public and with the state demanding he limit
his phone calls, this ordinary man is burdened by an extraordinary pressure
going into the Olympic Games.
Any layman labouring under the misapprehension that the Olympics are about
sport alone should examine the complexities of the Liu Xiang phenomenon.
This is the multimillionaire who lives in a two-bedroom apartment with his
coach; the public property condemned to the most private of lives; the man
who predicted a yellow tornado after Athens, but who remains a one-man wind
of change, debunking racial stereotypes and becoming a totem of national
pride.
Who is Liu? He is the 110 metres hurdles Olympic champion, just one of China's
32 gold medal-winners from Athens but the only one who needs a blacked-out
car to drive him to private rooms at karaoke bars. He is the only one who
cannot step outside his home in Shanghai for fear of being mobbed. The only
one handed the Olympic torch by President Hu Jintao in Tiananmen Square. In
short, Liu is the biggest star in China.
Why, you ask? The answer is twofold. First, he beat the West in one of their
own events, a cross-cultural contest of speed and strength out of kilter
with traditional metiers such as diving, shooting and table tennis. And
secondly, Liu is a good citizen, a proud patriot and a man with traditional
manners.
“Girls like him, old ladies like him, even men,” Feng Shuyong, the head coach
of China's athletics team, said. But Feng also conceded that Liu's status
had come at a cost. “I feel sorry for him,” he added. “He's a young man and
wants to do many things, but he can't. I feel very sorry for him.”
Pressure is the word most readily allied to Liu. His coach, Sun Haping, says
he is under more than Liu. Feng, too, admits to feeling under pressure. They
try to shield Liu, but know that if he does not retain his Olympic gold
medal in Beijing, the world's most populous nation will wake up to the
mourning after the night before. The writing is on the billboards that adorn
every street corner.
“Four years ago nobody recognised me,” Liu said by the side of an ageing track
in Beijing's national training centre. “Being famous is sometimes a good
thing, but sometimes not. I prefer not to be famous. My situation has
changed and I have money now, but I can't shop.”
After surprising everyone by becoming the first Chinese man to win a gold in
track and field, he shared a plane home with Yao Ming, the Chinese
basketball player who made his fame and fortune with the Houston Rockets in
the NBA. “He said to me, ‘Now you know how I feel,'” Liu recalled.
The difference is that while Yao moved to the United States, Liu has stayed in
China. In a country coming to terms with the erosion of traditional values,
he is a passport to the past.
He is a marketing dream with a conscience. Charlie Denson, the Nike brand
president, said: “When I think of Liu I think of Michael Johnson in the
mid-Eighties and I think of Tiger Woods.” Yet Liu has no car, lives close to
his parents, donated £35,000 to the Sichuan disaster fund and gives away 25
per cent of his commercial earnings to the national and provincial athletic
federations. He also turned down the chance to live a more free life in
Australia because of the food, although some question quite how much say Liu
had in that.
The implication is that he is still something of a political pawn and a Prozac
pill for the nation. The flipside to such cynicism is the fact he has
refused to compete in domestic competitions because the athletes do not meet
his standards and the trauma of running the public gauntlet is too much.
There is no doubt he has helped China with its inferiority complex. Take the
words of Feng about his athletes. “Chinese people are not as good as
Europeans and Americans,” he said. “You cannot easily find youngsters with
the right body shape. Yet if I go to Europe or America they are everywhere.
Liu's success has shown us something - there are 1.3 billion people here so
for sure there are some others out there like him.”
When he won Olympic gold as a callow 21-year-old, he made no bones about the
fact that he had hurdled an ingrained obstacle. “I think we Chinese can
unleash a yellow tornado on the world,” he said afterwards. “It's a kind of
miracle and I will work more miracles in the future.” That conflicted with
the view of the People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, which had
suggested the Chinese had “congenital shortcomings” and “genetic
differences” that prevented them from beating black and white athletes.
The world record of 12.88sec, set in 2006, and last year's World Championship
gold, won from lane nine with a cold, cemented a legend that began in humble
circumstances. His mother worked in a food factory and his father drove a
truck. An only child, his favourite pastime was eating his grandmother's
braised pork. After turning from the high jump to hurdles, his parents
withdrew him from Shanghai Sports School No2.
“Most parents want their children to have a normal education,” Sun said. He
rang Liu Xuegen, Liu's father, and a family conference of 20 extended
members was called. Eventually they relented and he went back to sports. Now
Liu Sr's boss has given him unlimited time off work “to look after his son”.
Liu said: “One day I will retire and then I want to look after my parents.”
He is the family man who rushed home from the World University Games to hang
his gold medal around his grandmother's neck as she lay dying from cancer.
He held it for her so it would not be too heavy. Unsurprisingly, China is in
thrall to such stories.
Team Liu, a seven-strong support group including two doctors and a driver,
tries to relax him. “I like to chat on the internet and play pool,” Liu
said. There is no girlfriend. “No time.”
It sounds a lonely existence, but inside the locked gates of the national
sports centre, he played table tennis with his training group and laughed.
Here is he safe. Outside is where the demons lie. “I will try my best,” he
said, “but I still have to live after this period. I think when I retire it
will be better. Then I will return to an ordinary life and it will be like
it was before.”
Until then it will be chaos, epitomised by the fans' reaction to his
appearance at the Olympic test event in Beijing. On Saturday night a crowd
of 48,000 crammed the stadium to watch him. By the time of the next race
most had left. Mobbed by journalists, he was forced to answer questions
about his “sexy jersey”. And about pressure. It is always pressure. Twenty
kilos and a billion dreams.
he will be fine
Wilson, GuangZhou, China
I think that his hair is just fine. Humble guy, I guess, not caring about appearances that much. Appearances don't count anyway, this is sports, not a beauty contest. Inspiring story. Good luck in Beijing, Liu.
Leroy Smith, Jersey City, USA
My one complaint about Liu is his mop top hair. He needs to shave his head
Edward Chai, Bronx, USA