Reflecting on Liu Xiang’s flameout now that the London Olympics have drawn to a close

Posted: 08/13/2012 4:26 pm

Hurdler Liu Xiang became the golden boy of Chinese athletics after becoming the country’s first competitor to win Olympic gold in a track and field event in 2004. But for the second olympics in a row he has crashed out as a nation expected. This second successive disappointment drew more than 2 million posts in the space of an hour on Chinese microblogs.

Handsome and likeable, people in China have every reason to love Liu along with other star Olympians such as Lin Dan and Chen Ding. But the world of sport is not supposed to be kind, and being a fan involves learning to meet heartache with stoicism.

Certain media have neglected to report that there were other competitors in the heat in which Liu fell last Tuesday. In fact, but four other male hurdlers fell in the heats. This has been attributed by netizen Li Yi to the British hosts making the hurdles 4.3cm taller than the standard on which all but the British athletes trained. Needless to say, Chinese netizens aren’t happy.

One Sina Weibo user screamed, “England, go and die!” The sentiment was echoed around Chinese cyberspace, but it’s common knowledge that home advantage is important in sport, and in 2008 China faced all kinds of allegations about cheating. It is hardly a coincidence that the country’s highest ever medal haul came on home soil. Having a victim complex is not an attractive quality in a person, why would that principle not apply to an entire country?

The Dutch soccer team of the 1970s is widely regarded as the greatest never to have won a World Cup. In 1974, they lost in the final to West Germany after a German newspaper published allegations about Dutch captain Johann Cruyff cheating on his wife. Cruyff had to spend the night before the final on the phone explaining himself. This was part of the reason why Cruyff did not go to the following World Cup in Argentina where the Dutch, captained by Cruyff’s very able lieutenant Johann Neeskens, lost again in the final to the hosts who were widely thought to be guilty of much skullduggery.

But that Dutch team is still remembered much more fondly than the teams that dispatched it because its dazzlingly talented members played with a flair and a joie de vivre that most athletes in the current Chinese system have beaten out of them before they reach puberty, if they even get that far.

There are two types of people who are wasting their lives as surely as any drug addict, alcoholic or fashion journalist: expats who spend their time whining about the fact that China isn’t fair, and Chinese who imagine the whole world is sufficiently interested in them to conspire against them.