BEIJING: Russian athletics pin-up Yelena Isinbayeva dazzled the Bird’s Nest crowd yesterday with a flamboyant, world-record breaking display of pole vaulting, after a morning dominated by Chinese disappointment.
Home fans had been stunned into silence and tears earlier in the day as national hero and 110 meters hurdles Olympic champion Liu Xiang hobbled off the track and out of the Games injured.
Sparkle returned to a packed stadium in the evening, though, when Isinbayeva vaulted to a new world record in a display of pure theater to transfix the crowd just as Usain Bolt’s virtuoso sprinting show had done at the weekend.
Defending her title, Isinbayeva sheltered under a towel and then, bizarrely, a duvet to focus her mind between vaults as cameramen swarmed around her.
With track events over and the gold medal already assured, her painstaking preparations and attempts to psyche herself up had the 91,000 crowd eating out of her hand for half an hour.
Isinbayeva, who has already set 13 outdoor world records, was the lone athlete in action as she tried to take it a centimeter higher. Finally, on her third attempt, she cleared 5.05 meters, screaming with joy even as she fell to earth.
The Russian lifted her eyes heavenward and then did a somersault of delight on the mat before acknowledging the cheers.
“I felt like I was an actress and all the stadium was just for me,” Isinbayeva said with a smile.
It was such a stark contrast to the morning’s action, when the exit of China’s most popular sportsman and main track hope cast a pall over an otherwise magnificent Games for the hosts.
At the end of day 10, China, though, led with a seemingly unbeatable 39 golds. The United States was way behind on 22.
These Games have been as closely choreographed as any in the Olympics 112-year-history, although for many observers the impression persists that the hosts are trying too hard to create a perfect event.
Beijing police had received 77 applications to stage protests in specially designated parks during the Games, but so far none had been approved, state media reported.
Far from the public eye, Beijing had stepped up repression in ethnic Tibetan regions during the Games, turning parts into “a virtual prison,” the Free Tibet Campaign said.
Nevertheless, it is excellence in the sporting arena which has grabbed most of the headlines so far. Kenya grabbed two track golds, with a seventh successive win in the men’s 3,000 meters steeplechase, and victory in the women’s 800 meters through another of athletics’ major emerging talents, 18-year-old Pamela Jelimo.
Jamaica stayed in the limelight, with Bolt breezing through two rounds of the 200 meters in his quest to be the first man to win the Olympic sprint double since Carl Lewis in 1984.
“Lightning” Bolt kept plenty in the tank as he prepared for tomorrow’s final, and again performed for the cameras before cantering home in golden shoes marked “Beijing 200m.” There was satisfaction too for the US team as they managed a clean sweep of the men’s 400 meters, led by Angelo Taylor.
The hosts of the 2012 Games, Britain, picked up another gold — their 12th — in cycling to regain third place in the medals table and chalk up their strongest showing since 1920. It was Liu’s sad story, though, that dominated attention in the morning.
After a false start in his first round heat, the man whose face adorns billboards across China clutched his leg and walked off the track. Fans looked stunned, some wept openly.
“Liu was very, very upset,” said athletics head coach Feng Shuyong of the tendon injury that compounded a hamstring problem. “He would not have withdrawn unless the pain was intolerable.” The 25-year-old Liu was more than just China’s best hope for track gold, he was also the country’s best-known sportsman, surpassing even NBA basketball player Yao Ming.
His personal coach for 12 years, Sun Haiping, wept, as did some Chinese journalists.
Liu became his country’s first male Olympic track champion in Athens in 2004 and was China’s best chance for an athletics gold in Beijing though he faced a stiff rival in Cuba’s Dayron Robles.
The son of a Shanghai truck driver, such was the weight of national expectation on Liu that he had not even been allowed to drive a car for fear of injury in the build-up to the Games. His former coach said excessive pressure from government and sports officials had prevented Liu recovering from his injury, while Chinese fans reacted with a mixture of sadness and anger. “Afraid of Robles, so fake an injury?,” one comment read on online portal Sina.
“Everyone was crying, my mother, my father, my cousin and my friends around me,” read another on the Reuters blog. “Liu Xiang became the symbol of new China ... even 10 more gold medals would not compensate for the loss of this gold.” Games poster-boy Michael Phelps was resting yesterday and looking forward to going home to his family, friends and his dog in Baltimore after his record eight golds at one Games.
Ominously for the world’s other swimmers, he said he wanted to swim for at least another four years to compete in London in 2012 and has not ruled out trying for nine medals next time.
“I really don’t know what my program will be, but nothing is impossible,” he told Reuters in an interview.
