Nine Hurdlers Begin Race, Five Finish

Dillon Cheverere12 years ago

Apparently there’s a sniper in the crowd at London’s Olympic Stadium, but luckily he only shoots at about 44% accuracy. He’s probably Canadian, or French. He’s quick to fire, though.

Hurdling looks really difficult, but I had no idea it was the type of thing that took out so many people. I could have walked this thing and finished 6th. In the men’s 110m qualifying heat, only five of the nine crossed the finish line, as the sniper picked off three of them at hurdle number one. The others got away and ran for their lives until another was picked off near the end of the race.

The heart-wrenching aspect in all this is that Chinese hurdler, and one of their most famous Olympians, Liu Xiang shredded his achilles in the process. Liu also had to tap out of the 2008 Olympics in his home country to a similar achilles injury. His racing career is now over. He won gold in the same event in 2004 and set a world record earlier this year, so medaling again in 2012 was a near certainty if he stayed healthy.

Someone may have to check my presumption here, but I’m pretty sure communist China treats their broken down athletes like we do our leg-broken racehorses. Sorry Liu, at least you had a good run.

This is a shitty YouTube video, but because of NBC copyrighting, this is all we have for now. I’ll try to find a better one.

Deadspin has a much better video of the race here.