Sports

Eleven years after retiring, China's greatest hurdler is now fighting the Shanghai Athletic Bureau in public over how he was kept 'on the books' all those years. Commentary demanding the full truth has turned a personal grievance into a national argument about how China treats its sports heroes.

Ding Ming, an 82-year-old Chinese masters athlete, won the M80 80-metre hurdles title at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Daegu, South Korea, with a time of 15.99 seconds — and broke the long-standing Asian record. The medal was another chapter in a decades-late athletic career that has a Chinese audience half his age wondering how they rank against him.

Sports

Liu Xiang Asks Weibo Whether He Should Buy Out His State Coaching Post or Return to the Track

China's Olympic hurdles legend Liu Xiang posted a rare personal appeal on Weibo, asking netizens to help him choose between buying out his state sports post or becoming a full-time coach. The answers are as much about how China treats its retired champions as about the choice itself.