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BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s 110m hurdles world record holder Liu Xiang will skip next year’s Golden League series in Europe to continue his preparations for the Beijing Olympics, local media reported on Thursday.
“The Golden League Oslo stop will clash with other competitions on our schedule, and the Rome and Paris stops will be so close to the Olympic Games, so we have decided not to take part,” China Daily quoted Liu’s coach, Sun Haiping, as saying.
Liu, who won gold at the Athens Olympics and is China’s main hope for an athletics gold in 2008, will use the World Indoor Championships in Valencia, Spain as his first major tournament next season.
The 24-year-old will kick off his outdoor competitions in Osaka followed by a test event at the 2008 Olympics athletics venue in Beijing in May, said Sun.
After a few warm-up meets in Europe and the United States, Liu will remain in Beijing from the end of June to focus on his preparations for the Olympics, which start on August 8.
“Liu’s level of physical strength has reached the top now. I’m confident about our further training,” he said.
Sun did not expect Liu to win all his races next year but was confident of gold at the Olympics.
“The gold medal at the Beijing Olympics is what we will strive for with every effort,” he said.
(Reporting by Liu Zhen; Editing by Peter Rutherford
Good idea. Maybe PJ can help us there, including indoor results. The problem is, sometimes in a more closed society, organized time trials that would actually replicate competition are not reported, as in Marita Koch’s time trial 21.56 before the World cup in 1985.
Another reason for less travel and external competition is that now there are TWO great Chinese hurdlers so they can create their own tough competition whenever they want.
they are still ass bad in the mens flat sprints with no one under 10.15 or 20.5 regardless of weather or altitude in 2007. edit: they also arn’t very good at the long sticks or the open 400.
liu very well could be the fastest guy from china in the flat 100 as well as the sticks.
it’ll be interesting to see which commie hurdler brings it home in '08. roybles or liu.
It could just be that the Chinese are perfectionists and Liu was made to perfect the hurdle technique through ridiculus amounts of training as a youth? I don’t know enough about hurdling to know whether his technique is superior to the other major players or not? One thing Chinese will never lack is technical supremacy, it’s whether or not they get the individuals with the physical attributes to be competitive at the very top.
until they “show me the money”, and produce someone who can make a final at a global championships in anything besides the 110 sticks, i’ll assume that Liu and the other hurdler are isolated cases with coaches doing things different than the norm in china and not indicitive of a shift towards athletic dominance.
Hater. I hope China pulls off something incredible just to prove to the rest of the world. I just hope more of their athletes will make it to the final rounds in other events not just hurdles. And I’m pretty sure they’ll win total medals as they got 2nd last year. Cmon, they’re hosting the Olympics. Also, they’ll probably find more freaks of nature like Liu Xiang in the future. They’re still developing and have 1.3 billion people.
It’s not hating if it’s the truth. China is screwed on the men’s side without Liu. Maybe they could put together a jumper or long hurdler, but for the sprints, they are a long way away.
