Word: hurdler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...however, and questions about China's continuing political repression festered on the sidelines. Throughout the Games, stories trickled out about jailed dissidents, banned websites and curiously empty designated protest zones. And, as if acting out a one-man play on the perils of overtraining and stifling national pressure, star hurdler Liu Xiang, the face of China's Olympics, arrived in the Bird's Nest to run his first qualifying race - then turned his back to the crowd and limped off the track. After a shocked silence, the weeping announcers on Chinese TV intoned that it was acceptable to continue idolizing...
...stories trickled out of jailed dissidents, banned websites and curiously empty protest zones. Then, as though summoned by some kind of karmic force, the Olympics produced a parable for the Chinese. Like a one-man play on the perils of over-training and stifling national pressure, China's star hurdler Liu Xiang arrived in the Bird's Nest to run his first qualifying race - and then decided that it was all too much. The athlete who was supposed to be the face of China's Olympics turned his back to the crowds and limped off the track. After a shocked...
...beach volleyball, in which the country's women placed ninth in Athens. This time around, China's red-bikini-clad sand spikers are guaranteed either gold or silver in the Aug. 21 final against the U.S. On Aug. 18 - the same day as when China's great male hope, hurdler Liu Xiang, flopped in the qualifiers - Chinese women quietly triumphed on the trampoline and uneven bars...
Earlier this spring, Liu had disappeared from public view, nursing a sore hamstring that led him to pull out of a May race and triggered another injury to his Achilles tendon. By the start of the summer, the protective cocoon around the hurdler had reached epic proportions. In June, Dayron Robles, a bespectacled Cuban, shaved one-hundredth of a second off of Liu's world record. The Chinese was going into the Beijing Olympics as the underdog. (Robles easily won his Beijing heat less than an hour before Liu was scheduled to compete, while medal contender Terrence Trammell...
...tissue, he described how Liu's hamstring and Achilles tendon had caused excruciating pain and how sports hospital staff had tried intensive massage to heal the injuries. But it was of no use. The throbbing, exacerbated by a training session two days before, was so severe that the hurdler was shivering during rehab treatments. Liu was determined to compete unless the pain was "intolerable," said Feng Shuyong, China's head athletics coach. Apparently, it was. Mighty Liu Xiang had dropped...