After Leaving the Sports Circle, I Became a Cooking God (Completed BL)

Chapter 43: Discussion about the 110-Meter Hurdles & Hu Li's Persistence

Translator: dapotaturs
Release Date: 09/03/2023

Whether it was the track and field enthusiasts present at the scene or those watching the live broadcast, everyone who saw Cui Luoheng's performance was plunged into an unprecedented state of bewilderment.

Since moving up to the adult group, Cui Luoheng's best and worst performances were 14.53 seconds and 14.91 seconds respectively. Not only had his personal best not broken the 14.50-second mark, but even within the same season, his individual results fluctuated dramatically. This made it difficult for his previous followers to determine his normal level.

It was believed that such a performance signified the downfall of a once-promising rising star. However, in this selection match, Cui Luoheng emerged with a time of 13.57 seconds, causing everyone to break out in a cold sweat.

But what does a time of 13.57 seconds mean?

The current 24-year-old hailed as the new generation hurdling king in the country, Lu Mengfan, had a personal best of 13.42 seconds. His season's best was 13.46 seconds. However, Lu Mengfan wasn't consistently able to achieve a time as fast as 13.57 seconds in all of his races, aside from that one season's best race.

As for the experienced 110-meter hurdles veteran Zhao Yankai, who was constantly overshadowed by Cui Luoheng in this race, his personal best was only 13.53 seconds. While he had achieved results of 13.70 seconds or less earlier in the season and won the Grand Prix 110-meter hurdles event, he hadn't managed to run within 13.60 seconds this year.

Cui Luoheng's own improvement was even more astounding, spanning from 14.53 seconds to 13.57 seconds, nearly a full second of improvement.

What does nearly a full second mean in the short sprinting event?

In the 2018 outdoor season, up until now, the world's best time was 13.08 seconds, held by the Spanish athlete Orlando. Therefore, with the addition of one second to this time, a time of 14.08 seconds would roughly place an athlete within the top 350 in the world.

This one second might pass by in the blink of an eye for the average person, but on this path, it blocked the way for more than three hundred athletes in the 110-meter hurdles event.

For most athletes who achieved a time of 14.08 seconds, even if they put forth all their effort for the remainder of their athletic careers, they might not be able to overcome this mere one-second barrier.

The world of sports is both harsh and realistic.

However, in today's competition, Cui Luoheng, whose best performance of the year was previously 14.53 seconds, directly surpassed athletes like Zhao Yankai in the preliminaries, raising his personal best by nearly a whole second!

As this result appeared, it truly shocked all the spectators and athletes on the scene.

Almost simultaneously with the announcement of the result, the on-site referee team and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) personnel responsible for supervision approached Cui Luoheng, asking him to cooperate with the drug testing process.

On the internet, the astonished track and field fans had regained their composure. Some mentioned the topic of doping, but it didn't attract much attention.

One track and field enthusiast from a track and field powerhouse nation expressed a clear and direct opinion:

"WADA personnel are right there on-site. Who in their right mind would take performance-enhancing drugs during a domestic selection match's preliminaries? Besides, don't treat performance-enhancing drugs as some sort of magical elixir. Research shows that even if you take them, the ideal improvement in performance is about 4%. Under normal circumstances, an improvement of 0.3 seconds is the maximum. With Cui Luoheng's previous personal best at 14.53 seconds, what kind of magical substance could improve his time by nearly a whole second? If such a thing truly existed, many foreign athletes would probably be flocking to China to get it."