Yesterday’s fourth day (24) of the 11th Chinese National Games in Jinan, China was carried out in warm weather with the temperature at 25-26 degrees Celsius at the start of evening and morning competition.
Day four only featured three finals and witnessed continued success of athletes who did well in Berlin at the World Championships with bronze medallist there, Liu Hong winning her first National Games 20km Race Walk title comfortably.
But the most anticipated and followed event of the evening was not a final because the number one Chinese athlete Liu Xiang made his first appereance in these Games. The media and crowd hype was absolutely enormous with more than 100s of different photographs published concerning the 2004 Olympic and 2007 World 110m Hurdles champion: Liu leaving the hotel, Liu coming to warm-up field, Liu warming up, Liu stretching, Liu walking to call-up room, Liu coming to the stadium, Liu competing…. And like an army of ants the photographers followed Liu after he had easily qualified for the final producing thousands of more pictures of the star….Read More
