Ack, poor Liu Xiang, China's hurdler

Liu Xiang, a great track star, one whose ups and downs we've chronicled in the precursor to this blog, crashed into the first hurdle in the morning heat of his signature event, the 110 meter hurdle, Tuesday, August 7th, in the London Olympics.

He fell badly, and hopped the rest of the way around the track in order to protect his right angle.

There's an odd coincidence here. Liu was wearing the number 1356. The Chinese news agency Xinhua says that he had been wearing that same number when he was injured four years before at the Beijing games. Well, the first two digits of that number do have a reputation to uphold!

Liu has, as always, my sympathies. I don't know what happened to him in what should have been a routine prep heat for him but his career has helped shatter ethnic/racial stereotypes (an Asian championship in track? ) and the other racers/hurdlers at the Olympics seem to have treated him almost as an honored elder statesman of their sport. His own Olympic gold came in 2004, which is starting to seem like a long time ago, given the brevity of athletic excellence (although of course we should note that Liu has excelled in a variety of non-Olympic meets a lot more recently than that.)

Indeed, Liu's 2004 time of 12.91 sec. remains the Olympic record in the event

So ... who is the new leading light in this event? The gold in London 2012 went to Aries Merritt, who won with a speed of 12.92. As you can see, he came within a whisker of Liu's 2004 time.

Merritt is a US athlete, born in Chicago in 1985.

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