Madam Tussauds eyes top hurdler Liu Xiang
(eastday)
Updated: 2005-05-25 08:58

The world-renowned Madam Tussauds is again eyeing a Shanghai celebrity and creating Liu Xiang in wax, today's Jiefang Daily reported.

China's Liu Xiang crosses the finish first for a golden victory in the men's 110 hurdles at the Athens Olympics in 2004. [AFP]

Prior to Liu, another Shanghai native, basketball player Yao Ming, was the first and only Chinese sports star to become a Madam Tussauds wax figure. He is currently on display at its Hong Kong venue.

Liu made history by becoming the first Chinese male track athlete to strike Olympic gold in the 110-meter hurdles at Athens last year.

He clocked 12.91 seconds to equal the world record set by Britain's Colin Jackson in 1993.

His figure will be revealed early next year, together with that of China's former table tennis heroine Deng Yaping, which is still under construction.

They will be the first group of exhibits at Madam Tussauds' sixth venue, which will open in Shanghai in cooperation with Shanghai New World Co Ltd.

At that time, Yao's figure will be moved to the local venue. But Madam Tussauds said it will not rule out the possibility of duplicating Yao's figure for the Hong Kong exhibition hall.

Madam Tussauds chose Liu for its new subject early this year. It sent the letter of intention to the headmaster of Shanghai's Xinzhuang Training Center, where Liu is trained, in February and received the official nod two months later.

In April, a work group of three staff arrived at the Xinzhuang training center and made thorough measurements collect Liu's data.

"I was measured throughout, from top to toe," Liu said, when recalling the measurement.

"Even my eyeballs, hair and the color of my skin were repeatedly measured. And they dotted many spots on my face to figure out the scales of various parts of my face", he remembered.

"I have no idea of such trivial data about my figure except that I wear size 42.5 shoes," Liu said. But now Madam Tussauds has all these data, which took over one hour to work out, and will keep them as its patent.

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