Many Chinese kids are in the market for a new idol. Even a lot of adults just can't get over Liu Xiang's dramatic withdrawal from the Games. China's champion hurdler showed in Athens that, as he put it, his “yellow” race can both run and jump, and do them both to precision. So the sight of him staggering off moments after stepping onto the track at the Bird's Nest was simply unfathomable. It's the nightmare Chinese sports fans will take away from an otherwise dreamy Games. My Chinese nephew, a 19-year-old jock, questions why Liu kept groping his thigh if his coach said the problem was his heel. Was the real problem his head?
In a cover story published Friday, the Chinese edition of Sports Illustrated reports that Liu's Achilles tendon inflammation was not only real, but that it was clear for some time that he would have difficulty competing. But that fact was handled in a less-than-transparent fashion. While his nagging injuries were not completely kept from the press, Liu himself was. Even his own family remains out of the loop, the magazine's account suggests. Asked about her kid’s condition after the race, Liu’s mother Ji Fenhua was quoted as saying: “It isn’t good for me to pry into his personal affairs. Right now he’s the son of the country. Wait a few years until when he’s returned to me.” On Wednesday, I spoke with SI China’s executive editor Wei Hanfeng about how the one gold medal Liu was expected to win meant more than the record haul of gold that Team China won. Excerpts:
Q: Press and television in China have been overwhelmingly sympathetic to Liu, but on the streets and the Web there’s a lot of cynicism and speculation. Is there any pressure or guidance from authorities on you regarding how to cover this story?
Not for us. In fact, the only direct pressure we had was from sponsors and advertisers. I wouldn’t really call it pressure. But they did ask the magazine to dilute our story somewhat, to soften it. But we are independent media, and we have to operate based on our values of independence.
Q: So you’ve felt a market backlash against Liu?
Yes, at least initially. Before this race, a slot [in the publication] beside Liu Xiang was such an honor. But now certain advertisers are asking specifically not to be placed near stories about Liu Xiang. There were at least two or three.
Q: But Nike has taken the opposite approach. Their ads embrace Liu’s situation as a fundamental part of sports.
For Nike, there’s no way to avoid it. They had to face up to it. They did the right thing. But there's been a lot of talk of several other sponsors pulling Liu Xiang’s ads for the moment. We’ll see.
Q: Why is there so much skepticism over what happened?
From what we know and reported, well before the race Liu Xiang’s heel injury was too serious for him to run. If that’s case then the question is why did he even take the track. Some people are comparing this to Ronaldo at the World Cup in 1998. In the final against France, people said Nike pressured Ronaldo to play on his bad ankle. Now you hear Chinese people who suspect it’s the same kind of thing here. They’re saying all sorts of things on the Internet -- about how Liu Xiang had to come out and at least show his face before going down. That’s the basic theory.
Q: If Liu’s camp had failed to alert people to the extent of his injury, he wasn't exactly left with many choices.
Yes, you could say that. If he had dropped out of the race ahead of time, people would suspect him of being one of two things: a coward, or a doper.
Q: If Liu's injury was real, why would he and his coaches and federation feel such pressure?
The pressure, direct or indirect, came from all sides: from the country, from the sponsors, from the officials and coaches, as well as from his own personal desire for success. We feel that all these factors combined bore down upon him.
Q: A lot of people still don’t believe that he was as badly hurt as he appeared. Was it the pressure, or the pain, that caused him to pull out?
Liu Xiang definitely would have run if he could. But China has some very strange history here. Back in 1962, the ping pong player Han Yuzhen was facing a big match in Japan. But she suffered a deep cut in her left hand and had to pull out. She claimed a Japanese attacker broke into her hotel room [and wounded her]. But then it was discovered that she took a knife to her own hand. Why? She did it because was afraid she was going to lose and bring shame upon the nation [On returning home Han was banished to reeducation through labor on a farm; she was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and died of cancer in 1979, aged 38] Today the times are completely different, but Liu Xiang is under just as much pressure. This is just an ordinary injury. But it’s become a major event for society.
Q: Liu Xiang is not just an ordinary star.
Of course. He’s conscious of that that. He’s got something like 14 different sponsors. If he were just an ordinary sports star, it would have been easy for him to say, “I’m injured and I’m not racing.” It seems the most innocent thing. But for him it’s a scandal.
Q: But why did he have to apologize?
That’s his Chinese subconscious talking. They knew what people might start to say: That for example they covered up the injury in order to keep his ad deals going this year. If the sponsors knew long ahead of time that there’s no way he would be Olympic champion, then what? That’s how people tend to think. His partnership with Cadillac, for instance, only began this year. And what do you say to the country? [In March, Chinese leader] Hu Jintao passes you the torch to start Olympic torch relay. And now you’re not ready to go? The state attached so much importance to him, and the people pinned their Olympics hopes to him.
Q: Still, China is going to end up with 50 gold medals, the highest number of any country. Doesn’t that make up for the loss of one?
Sure. But you could say that a lot of these other medals are cheap. The governments invests so much into the minor sports, and in a sense the results sort of trick the people. But when you win a medal in the so-called big sports – basketball, soccer, or track – that’s really something. People know the difference. So that’s why people had their hopes riding on Liu Xiang. Nothing can really compensate. Another fifty gold medals cannot make up for this. We’d won so much gold [the first week], but then this. People were completely caught off-guard. The way it happened, it was like Heaven was playing a joke on China!
Q: Do you feel everyone’s making too much of this?
No. It’s a huge story. To tell you the truth, when I watched it, my tears were uncontrollable. But I also felt very conflicted about it. On the one hand, here you have just an injured athlete. But on the other, he’s a symbol of the country. His image was completely one of health, vigor, and omnipotence. We put him on such a high pedestal. He basically became a spokesman for the new generation of Chinese people. So the feeling is, “how could this happen to him? This is always our nation’s bad fate.”
But that’s the other problem. Why must we feel this way? Chinese people have such a drive to win. Other nations know what sports they can play and what sports they can’t. But we feel we should be able win at absolutely everything – in soccer, basketball, everything. Maybe part of it’s because as a nation, we were bullied around for too long -“100 years of humiliation,” and so on. But then this ambition culminates in misery, because you see the result. We cannot always break through, cannot accomplish it all. So in the end you just feel hurt. This is what I feel inside, as a Chinese citizen.
Q: But your work is sport.
Yeah. And right now, at least, I feel that [Liu Xiang’s withdrawal] is the biggest sporting event in my life. The Beijing Olympics, that’s an intangible sort of thing. But Liu Xiang, that you can deeply feel. You can feel what his mom is feeling. You can feel the pain in his foot.
Q: What if he had raced and lost?
No problem. That would have been normal. Didn’t [former champ] Allen Johnson fall down in Athens? The 110-meter hurdles is a very tough race. Everything has to go righ [for an athlete] to win. Not a lot of people realize that. But his pulling out so suddenly, after all the buildup, struck some sort of nerve in the self-esteem of the Chinese people. This reaction is really quite vain.
Q: Yao Ming was injured earlier this year, too. Why was that handled so differently?
China’s expectations of Liu Xiang and Yao Ming are very different. They want Liu Xiang to win gold at the Olympics, but they only hope Yao Ming will win an NBA championship. Some fans even said they would rather that Yao not play at the Olympics, because they were scared he’d aggravate his injury. Yao Ming was injured, the Rockets announced it, and everyone moved on. But Liu Xiang trained behind closed doors, the Chinese way. And everyone was preparing for him. Even Newsweek was preparing for him. You put him on your cover.
Q: In his CCTV interview [broadcast the day after his pullout] Liu himself seemed shocked by the injury.
It’s as if the whole world was preparing a banquet for you and you didn’t show up. And you didn’t even bother to call and tell them ahead of time. Or you just stopped by for a minute and then left.
Q: Yet it seems Chinese media are standing firmly behind Liu Xiang. Why is that? What other considerations go into your treatment the story?
Obviously it’s hard to be too critical. That would not be fair. The issue’s so complex. And when the nation’s Vice-President [Xi Jinping] sends official condolences and understanding, you have to take note of that, too. Our original headline was “Liu Xiang: A Nation Dumbstruck”. But we decided that was too strong for the cover. So we changed it to something simple: “Liu Xiang: 8.18” [the date of the race].
Q: The state runs competitive sport in China and raises all the athletes. But Liu Xiang transcended the system and became something much more. How hard is it for China to produce more stars like him?
You are lucky to have grown up with sports stars you can really love. China now has so much money and so much status and everything else but we have no sports stars whom we can really extend our love towards. Maybe if there were ten Yao Mings and ten Liu Xiangs, the disappointment over Liu Xiang would be minimized and our drive to win would be diluted. But for now there’s only one Yao Ming, only one Liu Xiang.
