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John Millen

The hurdles is one of the fastest and most strenuous races in the Olympic Games. Right, they're off! Over they go!
Hurdling is for runners with springs on their feet. The sprint hurdles race is 110 metres for men and 100m for women.
The long hurdles race is run over 400m for both male and female athletes. A hurdle is, of course, something that you have to get over. Both the sprint and the long hurdles race involve jumping over 10 hurdles.
The sprint hurdles race uses hurdles  1.06m high for men and 0.83m  for women.
The 400m race has hurdles 0.91m  and 0.76m  high. The world record for the 110m men's is an amazing 12.88 seconds.
Can this record be broken in Beijing 2008?
Questions
1. The hurdles is an Olympic swimming event. (True/False)
2. Hurdlers run the same distance in the long hurdles race. (True/False)
China's star Liu Xiang leaps past rivals
Liu Xiang is the world's fastest 110m hurdler. He leaps over those hurdles as if he has wings on his feet.
Liu's 2004 Olympic winner's medal in Athens was China's first gold in a men's track and field event.
He is also the first Chinese athlete to win the athletics triple crown (world record holder, world champion, Olympic champion) for his country.
Two years before his first Olympic victory, Liu had broken the world junior hurdling record, and by the time Athens came around, he was at his very best.
Liu's Olympic gold showed the world that an Asian athlete can be a top performer in athletics.
On August 31, 2007, Liu won another gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Japan with a time of 12.95 seconds.
Questions
3. Liu Xiang is the world record holder for the 110m hurdles. (True/False)
4. Liu won Olympic gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. (True/False)
Golden Sally
A British mother of three, Sally Gunnell was the hurdling star of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
Gunnell had been persuaded by her  coach to switch to hurdling after starting her athletics career as a long jumper and pentathlete.
She won her first hurdling gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986 but disappointed herself at the Seoul 1988 Olympic Games when she won no medal.
But, four years later, Gunnell was electrifying in Barcelona. She was placed in lane three of the 400m hurdles. She pulled ahead at the eighth and stylishly won gold to great acclaim. She was set to repeat her success in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, but disaster struck when she sustained an injury. She retired in 1997 as one of the greatest hurdlers of the 20th century.
Questions
5. Sally Gunnell won Olympic gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. (True/False)
6. Gunnell didn't begin her athletics career as a hurdler. (True/False)
Olympics Fact File
Choose the correct word or number from the brackets and then copy each fact into your Olympics Fact File.
1. In hurdling races, athletes jump over (10/20) hurdles.
2. Male and female athletes jump over hurdles at (different/lower) heights.
3. Liu Xiang's gold medal in Athens was the (latest/first) Olympic track and field medal for China.
4. Liu won (silver/gold) at the 2007 World Athletics Championships in Osaka, Japan.
5. Sally Gunnell was a gold medal winner at the (Athens/Barcelona) Olympics in the 400m women's hurdlles.
6. Gunnell retired from athletics in 1997 after a serious (injury/career) at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Answers:
1. false, 2. true, 3. true, 4. false, 5. false, 6. true
Olympics Fact File: 10 / different / first / gold / Barcelona / injury



Hurdling high