Nagoya Asian Games women's 100-meter hurdles: Zhang Boya finished fourth in 13.17 seconds

Zhang Boya. (Photo by reporter Chen Zhiqu)

[Special Correspondent Wu Mengyuan/Reporting from Nagoya] The 23-year-old "hurdle sweetheart" Zhang Boya finished fourth in the women's 100-meter hurdles final of the Nagoya Asian Games today with a time of 13.17 seconds. She missed the podium for two consecutive years. She said after the game that it was a pity, but she refused to be defeated. "If you lose, you will lose. Come back next time. Anyway, I am still young!"

Zhang Boya only ran a personal best of 12.96 seconds at the Kinan Michitaka Memorial Race in May this year, which was only 0.03 seconds away from the national record of 12.93 seconds set by Ji Zheng in 1970. However, she revealed that she actually suffered a serious back injury in August and did not run for a month, but she did not want to worry everyone so she did not say anything, "Because I don't think this will affect the performance of the competition. When you go to the battlefield, the same weather and the same track are the same for everyone, so there is no excuse."

Zhang Boya, who clocked 13.08 seconds in the preliminaries, made a small hurdle error in the finals today, which became the key to her inability to advance her results. "I don't know which hurdle was behind me, but I hit it with my leg, and the whole stall went to the right. Then I jumped up instead of forward, so I hit the hurdle and stalled, but that's how the game is."

After finishing 4th in both competitions, Zhang Boya said with a smile, "I might have lost at the start of the last competition, but now I am losing at the end. I think I won't lose in the next competition because of the accumulation of experience. Moreover, I was pleasantly surprised after finishing the finals last time. It felt very fresh and I didn't know anyone else, so it was a bit unexpected. But this time there was a gap because I had expected and prepared, and felt that I had a good chance, and then the result was like this." She also said, "I need to eat eel rice now!"

Zhang Boya. (Photo by reporter Chen Zhiqu)