Asian Games women's 100m hurdles preliminaries Zhang Boya advanced to the final with a time of 13.08 seconds

Zhang Boya (left). (AP)

[Special Correspondent Wu Mengru/Reporting from Nagoya] It rained continuously in Nagoya, but "Hurdle Sweetheart" Zhang Boya still broke out in 13.08 seconds in the women's 100-meter hurdles preliminaries of the Asian Games in Nagoya. She advanced to tomorrow's finals in second place in the group and fought hard to stand on the podium.

Zhang Boya ran a career-best time of 12.96 seconds at the Kinami Michitaka Memorial Race in May, which was only 0.03 seconds away from the national record of 12.93 seconds set by Norimasa in 1970. She hopes to maintain her momentum this time at the Nagoya Asian Games. She will appear in the first group and lane 8 in the preliminaries tonight, competing with Japan's national record holder Hitomi Nakajima, and finally finished second in the group and third overall, and successfully advanced to the finals.

Although it was raining at the scene, Zhang Boya was glad that there was no water on the track, so it would not be too slippery. She said: "Before we came, we could probably guess that the weather was not that good, and it was raining when we moved to the mountains, so the teacher thought I should adapt quickly." She rated her first performance as satisfactory. She said, "Because I was very worried about whether I could make it to the finals at the beginning. The teacher also told me to be more confident, but I still felt a little unconfident. I just tried not to think too much." She pointed out that the first six hurdles can be followed, and she just needs to wait for the finals to adjust the rear hurdles to see if they can go more smoothly.

It is worth mentioning that Zhang Boya is not only very popular in Taiwan, but also attracted great attention when she came to Japan. A Japanese media reporter who came from Tokyo to interview even listed questions in Chinese. She laughed and said: "Because Zhang Boya is very famous!"