SU: THE END IS NEAR

Expected, yet unprepared, Asia's fastest sprinter Su Bingtian has possibly completed his career finale in a humbler-than-deserved way, as he looks forward to uncovering and nurturing the next big thing in Chinese athletics.

His start wasn't as explosive, his acceleration was off the pace and the result was nothing near his best — Su, the first and only 100m Olympic finalist from Asia, eventually proved vulnerable to the cruel nature of competitive sports.

In his first official race in nearly two years, the 35-year-old, who just came back from a long injury layoff, failed to meet the entry benchmark for this fall's National Games, after he clocked 10.49 seconds in the heats at the Zhaoqing leg of the domestic grand prix in Guangdong province on Friday.

He was all smiles, though, even knowing that his desired one last dash on the national stage in his native Guangdong province is almost impossible.

"I always said I would keep running until I couldn't do it at the very elite level. And now, I feel I really can't," Su said after failing to meet the 10.11s National Games entry mark with his performance on Friday.

"I've done all that I could do (since returning to training at the end of 2024), and there is no way that I can improve dramatically fast enough in the next couple of months in my current condition.

"For me, I think it's no longer a realistic goal (to reach the entry mark).

"I feel like this might be the last individual 100m race of my career," Su said calmly in a televised post-race interview, catching fans off guard with his blunt confession, ending an illustrious career.

Su withdrew from the semifinals on Saturday as he had hinted, only lacing up for Guangdong in Sunday's 4x100m relay and helping his provincial team finish first as the lead-off leg in the final.

A strong starter, known in his prime for his scintillating pace and consistent strides, Su admitted that he even fell out of rhythm competing among his younger peers at the domestic meet, after not having any systematic training in almost two years since his last major event — the 2022 world championships in Eugene, Oregon.

"Most of the athletes around me were born in the late 1990s or 2000s. There are very few of us born in the 1980s left on the track," said Su, who made it into the 100m final at the Tokyo Olympics — becoming the first Asian man to do so — with a continental record of 9.83s in the semis on Aug 1, 2021.

"I feel that I have pushed myself to the limit, and I have no regrets in my career whatsoever."

Still, to try to make his home relay team at the 2025 National Games, which will be in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in November, remains a strong enough push for Su to keep training.

"To come back again, I mainly want to contribute to the Guangdong team in the relay. I will see if I can still bring some edge to the relay team in the race," said Su, who was born in Zhongshan and began athletics training at junior high school.

Standing 1.72 meters tall, Su was never considered a born talent in the brutally physical sprint discipline, where length of stride matters, with his early years in the national program overshadowed by another young prospect Zhang Peimeng, who became the first Chinese to reach 10.00 sec in an official meet at the 2013 worlds in Moscow.

Su's own strength lay in his starting technique and stride frequency, significantly enhanced by renowned American coach Randy Huntington. It soon helped his career take off, as he became the first Asian-born man to crack the 10-sec barrier after clocking 9.99s at an IAAF grand prix event in Eugene in June 2015.

In 2018, Su twice equaled the previous Asian record of 9.91s, and clocked 9.92s to take that year's Asian Games 100m title in Jakarta coached by Huntington, former mentor of men's long jump world record holder Mike Powell of the United States.

Despite a one-year delay due to the pandemic, the Tokyo Games presented the red-hot Su a perfect stage to shine, with his breakthrough final appearance etched in history as one of the all-time greatest athletic feats in China, equaling legendary 110m hurdler Liu Xiang's groundbreaking gold medal at the 2004 Athens Games.

Spearheaded by Su, the Chinese team clocked a national record of 37.79 in the 4x100m relay final at Tokyo 2020 to finish fourth, but was promoted to the bronze-medal position in May 2022, when the International Olympic Committee ruled to disqualify the runner-up Team GB over a doping violation.

With or without a final race at the National Games, Su said he could hang up his spikes in peace, knowing that his legacy as an athlete is secured, and his future as a contributor to Chinese athletics will be just as exciting.

"I will, for sure, stay around the sport to give back what I've learned from decades of training and racing at the highest level to Chinese athletics," said Su, who is currently a professor at the School of Physical Education of Jinan University in Guangzhou.

"I think we are not short of young talent at the grassroots level. We need to make sure that they will be developed in the right way, and on a consistent basis.

"I've developed a training system tailored for Asian athletes, and I am eager to engage with more young hopefuls and help them with such proven expertise," said Su.