"Technique?"
Sun Haiping fell into thought.
Just as Chen Yu was about to elaborate, he noticed that not far away on the track, Bolt was also standing in front of a hurdle.
He wasn’t using starting blocks. His body leaned back, then exploded forward with force. He shot out like a cheetah. It felt like he was at full tilt after only two steps, and upon reaching the hurdle, he launched himself into the air.
His form was far from standard, of course.
But it was as if he were flying as he vaulted over the barrier.
In mid-air, he tucked his trail leg, and as if stepping on air itself, he cleared the hurdle and landed three or four meters beyond it.
His takeoff point was at least two meters before the hurdle.
This meant that with a running start, he had easily leaped a distance of five meters.
The most important thing was his posture; he truly looked like he was strolling on clouds as his entire body sailed over the hurdle.
Chen Yu grimaced and silently cursed in his mind, ’What a freak.’
The distance of the jump was one thing, but that explosive power and the sense of weightlessness in the air could only be described as freakish.
This guy truly possessed epic-level talent.
Sprinting, long jump, high jump... it felt like if he trained properly, he could be world-class in all of them.
Beside him, Liu Xiang had a calm expression. He had seen plenty of Black athletes with this kind of leaping ability on the track, and every single one of them had lost to him.
"Your start is very fast," Chen Yu said, pointing at the screen. "But I feel there’s still room for improvement."
Watching Liu Xiang on the screen explode from the start and hit his sprinting form in just a few steps, Chen Yu’s interest was piqued.
The matter of sponsoring Bolt had sparked a great interest in Chen Yu for these top-tier athletes and the limits of the human body.
"Follow me."
Chen Yu called out, leading Liu Xiang toward the rehabilitation center.
"Whoa."
Seeing the rehabilitation center, which spanned several thousand square meters and was filled with all sorts of training equipment he had never seen before, Sun Haiping couldn’t help but exclaim.
Just a glance at all this was enough to show how professional Chen Yu was.
Liu Xiang’s eyes were also wide with amazement. Back home, an athlete like him who trained for running just needed a track. For strength training, it was just pumping iron at the gym with the most basic equipment.
"This way," Chen Yu said, leading the large, bustling crowd deeper into the rehabilitation center.
Bolt, who had tagged along to see the excitement, already knew what was about to happen. He jabbered away, asking Liu Xiang how fast his start was.
Liu Xiang was completely baffled; he had no idea what Bolt was saying.
In a corner on the first floor of the rehabilitation center, a thirty-meter-long rubber track had been installed against the wall.
At the starting line, a pressure-sensing false start system was installed.
It was identical to the one used in the Olympics.
This technology had only been in use since the ’84 Los Angeles Olympics.
He didn’t have it originally, but after taking on Bolt, Chen Yu had a set installed.
The purpose was to accurately test Bolt’s start reaction time and conduct targeted training.
In sprinting, the start is crucial. A reaction time of 0.1 seconds is already considered slow.
It wasn’t installed on the main track because an indoor environment is better for practicing starts, so it was put here instead.
"Go give it a try. I want to see your start speed," Chen Yu said.
On the track, he had only intuitively felt that Liu Xiang’s start was fast, but he needed precise numbers to know exactly how fast.
Sun Haiping followed Liu Xiang forward, enviously sizing up the equipment.
He knew exactly what it was, of course; major competitions held in China all used it.
The problem was, who could afford to use it for daily training?
During their training back home, they often had to rely on stopwatches, which meant they could only make rough estimates based on observation.
But here was Chen Yu, whose clinic merely did some rehabilitation training on the side, and he had such professional equipment. To this, Sun Haiping could only say the gap was immense.
Yagudin and Little Curry, who were also training here, followed along.
Yagudin curiously asked Bolt, "Is Liu Xiang very fast?"
Bolt nodded. "Probably faster than me."
Yagudin was shocked.
He had been tested on this thing too; his best time was 0.186 seconds.
Bolt, on the other hand, had clocked a best of 0.167 seconds—an even more ridiculous number.
However, Bolt had mentioned that because of his height, this number wasn’t actually that good. A world-class 100-meter sprinter should be lower, somewhere around 0.14 seconds.
On the track, Liu Xiang got ready.
Two meters behind him was a loudspeaker.
As the starting gun fired, Liu Xiang exploded forward instantly.
The result immediately appeared on the adjacent LED screen.
0.136 seconds!
"Fuck," Nelson exclaimed. He knew professional athletes were inhuman, but this number still startled him.
His own best time was 0.274 seconds.
A gap of nearly 0.15 seconds.
Don’t underestimate that 0.15 seconds. On the track, that could be the difference of a full body length, or even a world record.
Bolt and Yagudin winced as they watched.
Beside them, Mills’s eyes lit up. Any track and field coach would be thrilled to see such a promising talent.
Little Curry’s jaw nearly hit the floor. He tugged on Chen Yu’s arm, yelling about how fast Liu Xiang was.
He had been tested too, and his best time was only around 0.24 seconds.
After all, he was still a kid whose body hadn’t fully developed; that time was already very strong for his age.
Chen Yu sighed inwardly. This guy in front of him truly had extraordinary talent.
At this millisecond level, talent was what created the gap.
From the sound of the starting gun, the signal travels to the ear, from the ear to the brainstem, from the brainstem to the auditory cortex, from the auditory cortex to the motor cortex, and is then converted into a motor signal sent to the legs before the body can react.
As for this duration, back in 1990, World Athletics had conducted a study and concluded that the minimum time should be 120 milliseconds, or 0.12 seconds.
But they later discovered that humans were far more formidable than they had imagined. After another round of research, they set the number at 100 milliseconds.
They believed it was fundamentally impossible for a human to break that number.
And yet, in some competitions, start reaction times below 100 milliseconds still occurred.
But basically, 100 milliseconds was considered the absolute limit.
In the entire world, there were probably only a few people who could produce such a number.
Some even had to use drugs, like that walking pharmacy, Ben Johnson.
Liu Xiang’s time of 0.136 seconds had already reached the world’s most elite level.
Liu Xiang slowly jogged back, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Dr. Chen, I feel like I can be faster. I wasn’t fully ready to react just now."
Chen Yu was taken aback. ’Are you sure?’ he thought.
Watching Liu Xiang do a few simple stretches and take his place at the starting line again, Nelson couldn’t help but whisper, "Chen, he’s not human."
He already hit 0.136 seconds, and he still thought it wasn’t his best time.
At the starting line, Liu Xiang raised his head slightly, took a deep breath, then lowered his head, ready.
BANG! He burst forward.
Everyone’s eyes immediately shot to the screen.
The result appeared instantly.
0.114 seconds!
HISS!
Chen Yu drew a sharp breath.
’He’s really not human!’
Even Sun Haiping, the coach who spent every day with Liu Xiang, wore a look of disbelief. He had always known Liu Xiang’s start was fast, but 0.114 seconds had to be his best ever.
Mills’s eyes were frighteningly bright. He clapped Bolt on the shoulder and said, "If you had that kind of start speed, your time would improve by at least 0.5 seconds."
A faster start leads to a faster pace throughout, and the final impact on the time would be absolutely massive.
Bolt gave a wry smile. ’I’m this tall,’ he thought. ’How much faster do you think I can get?’
However, Liu Xiang was also 1.9 meters tall, not much different from himself. To have that kind of reaction speed... all he could say was that it was just too incredible.
Liu Xiang came back, shaking his head slightly. He felt he could still be faster.
So he stood at the starting line once more.
The starting gun fired. The time appeared.
0.119 seconds.
It was slower.
He tried one more time: 0.122 seconds. Even slower.
Chen Yu waved his hand, signaling for Liu Xiang to stop.
If he kept running, his times would only get worse. Athletes prepare all year long for just ten seconds of brilliance. Running again would just deplete his stamina.
Sizing up the slender Liu Xiang, Chen Yu lamented inwardly.
The start is actually a huge test of explosive power. Looking at Liu Xiang’s physique, his muscles and Achilles tendons, his explosive strength definitely wasn’t the absolute best.
To be able to produce numbers like that, it could only mean his reaction speed and his control over his body were on a historic level.
Previously, Chen Yu had thought Little Curry’s reaction speed was incredibly fast for his young age. But compared to Liu Xiang, the gap in their talent was about the size of a Bolt.
"By the way, what’s your personal best right now?" Chen Yu asked.
Liu Xiang paused for a second and said, "13.12 seconds."
That was the time he’d run in the summer to break the world junior record, which also broke the Asian record.
"What’s the world record?" Chen Yu asked, turning his head to Nelson.
Nelson thought, ’How would I know?’ He didn’t care about this stuff.
Sun Haiping immediately answered, "The world record is 12.91 seconds."
As he finished, his eyes filled with frustration and regret.
The gap between his time and the world record set by Colin Jackson was only 0.21 seconds.
That number wasn’t large—about the time it takes to blink—but it was an insurmountable chasm for the current Liu Xiang. It was also why he believed Liu Xiang had hit a plateau.
Chen Yu studied Liu Xiang, a heroic feeling inexplicably swelling in his heart.
’This guy... he might just be able to create a miracle.’
On the track, in competitions that represented the peak of human physicality, when the field was a sea of Black athletes, Liu Xiang’s emergence would absolutely represent something significant!
"Right, do you have any competitions next year?" Chen Yu asked.
Liu Xiang looked blank, not understanding why Chen Yu was suddenly asking about this.
Sun Haiping was also puzzled. He thought for a moment and said, "There’s nothing left this year, but there should be quite a few next year. The World Championships, then the World Athletics Grand Prix and Golden League. Oh, right, there’s also the National City Games next year. He should be participating in that too."
Chen Yu then asked, "So, Coach Sun, do you think if he participates in the Grand Prix and the Golden League, he’ll be able to win prize money? Or get a share of the gold?"
If he remembered correctly, the World Athletics Grand Prix and Golden League events were winner-take-all. If you didn’t win the championship, you were just there for the experience. The small amount of prize money you got from placing wouldn’t even be enough to cover preparation and airfare.
Sun Haiping gave a wry smile. "That’s probably not going to happen."
Sprinting isn’t like high-profile, highly commercialized sports like soccer or basketball, where a single player can easily earn millions, or even tens of millions, of US dollars.
Runners’ incomes really aren’t that high; they rely on the prize money from these major competitions.
Therefore, everyone who goes is a top expert. With Liu Xiang’s current times, it would be basically impossible for him to win a championship and take home the prize money.
Chen Yu smiled, then said, "Well then, Coach Sun, I have a proposal. I wonder if you two would be interested."

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