From director Gu Jun comes this documentary that was seven years in the making in China. It blends five story lines: a family that was relocated for the Olympic Village, the construction of the "Bird’s Nest" stadium, young female gymnasts, training of the Beijing SWAT team, and most interesting to the running crowd is the training of 2004 Olympic 110 meter high hurdle champion Liu Xiang. First introduced about 22 minutes into this film, Xiang is shown winning the gold medal as well as his arrival on the hurdle scene at the 2001 East Asian Games. He is interviewed as well as his coach, Sun Haiping. Although there is some English spoken, this film is subtitled throughout. There are four segments on Liu spread periodically with about 11 minutes of footage in all dedicated to this champion and former world record holder. Several flights of hurdles are shown with the climax of this production on the September 2007 Shanghai Golden Grand Prix race where Dayron Robles takes the top step of the award stand. The finish acknowledges the advertisements, endorcements, and pressure put upon Liu as the games approach and he took his training "behind closed doors" prior to the games. Although this film is enjoyable and shows a unique human perspective to the Olympic games, hurdling takes a back seat to the stadium construction (an amazing process) and the preparation of the gymnasts.
The following clip shows a portion of this film, unfortunately, not including Liu Xiang in this particular segment:
