Breaking a speed limit

At last year's Paris Olympics, Xie Zhenye carried China's hopes alone in the men's 100 meters. This Saturday, as the World Athletics Championships get underway in Tokyo, he will no longer stand alone at the starting line.

Alongside him will be 21-year-old Deng Xinrui — a rising sprinter a decade his junior, and China's first "post-2000" athlete to qualify for the 100m at the worlds.

Deng's journey has been swift and striking: from a sensational debut two years ago and some inevitable peaks and troughs, to a resurgent run last month, when he clocked 10.06 seconds to claim the national title and become the fourth-fastest Chinese man in the 100m discipline.

Now, he steps onto the global stage not just to compete, but to embody the promise of a new generation of Chinese sprinters.

"The high-intensity rhythm of the world championships may actually help me find my stride," Deng told The Paper. He admitted that, over the past two years, learning to slow down has made him faster.

"I want to perfect every detail, and see if there's a chance to make improvements and breakthroughs at the worlds."

In third grade, Deng joined his school's track and field team on a whim. Born prematurely and often frail as a child, he was encouraged by his parents to exercise for health reasons — but his aptitude for sprinting emerged quickly. By fourth grade, he had already won his first district championship.

Unlike many professional athletes, Deng chose a path that balanced study and training. From primary school through high school, he trained at school. By the end of 2021, he clocked 10.87s in the 100m; in September 2022, he entered Jinan University's School of Physical Education as a freshman.

Before the 2023 season, few had heard of him. But that year, at the National Athletics Championships in Quzhou, Zhejiang province, he stunned the field by winning gold with a time of 10.23. In just seven months, in his first season as a professional, he had lowered his personal best from 10.63 to 10.21.

"When I first entered university, my goal was just to see if I could run 10.50 by the time I graduated," Deng recalled. "I studied physical education and thought I might become a PE teacher or a coach after graduation. Hitting the national athlete standard would make my resume look good. I never imagined I'd make this kind of breakthrough."

Deng's rapid rise owed much to his winter training before that season. In 2022, when he entered Jinan University, China's sprinting star Mo Youxue — a 4x100m relay silver medalist at the 2015 World Athletics Championships — also started at the university as a lecturer. That entire winter, for more than three months, Mo trained alongside Deng as an assistant coach and training partner.

"Deng's greatest natural gift is his incredibly fast step frequency," Mo explained. "His style was a lot like Su Bingtian's in his early days: explosive at the start, but the speed dropped significantly later on. That rhythm wasn't sustainable."

Under Mo's guidance, Deng began focusing on race rhythm and core strength, while correcting flaws in his running form.

Once those technical bottlenecks were cleared, progress came quickly — from breaking 10.50 to pushing past 10.30.

Back in high school, Deng changed his WeChat name to "1050" — a constant reminder of his first goal: to break 10.50. In 2023, after achieving it, he set a new target — renaming himself "1025", then "1010".

However, he kept "1010" for over two years — until last month, when he ran 10.06. The very next day, he changed it again: "1005".

The past two years have been a grind through setbacks and low points: taking a break from school to train strained his relationship with his family to a breaking point; repeated failures forced him to learn how to live with defeat. To move forward, he had to tear down old habits and rebuild his technique from the ground up.

And finally, he cleared the hurdle.

"That step was too big," Deng said of his decision two years ago to change his name from"1025" to "1010". "Every time I saw that name, it reminded me: there's still unfinished business ahead. It kept me clear on what I had to do each day to get closer to it."

For the past two years, Deng has chosen a path unlike most athletes. While many train within provincial or city teams, he opted for a club-based program — more personalized, from technical refinement to competition planning.

His 2023 breakthrough, he recalled, brought more questions than answers: "How did I run that fast? How do I win again?"

Back then, results came from raw drive, not stable technique.

Everything changed in 2024, when he adopted a new training system that stripped his old habits and rebuilt his form from scratch. "It was tough," he said. "At one point I felt like I didn't even know how to run."

Now based in Shenzhen, his routine is deliberate: a 9:30 am start, 30 minutes of warm-up, then a mix of speed, strength, and technical sessions — lean, purposeful, no wasted effort.

Each technical movement is now finely annotated: the angle of the arm swing, the point of force application — all described in precise terms. Deng can clearly recall the technical differences between running 10.3 and 10.2; he knows exactly how many seconds he must run each 30-meter segment to support his 100m target.

From 2024 to today, competition data has built a reliable resource, giving every step of his plan a concrete reference point. As long as he meets these conditions, the results will follow.

At the National Athletics Grand Prix in Chongqing this May, Deng won in 10.18. At the finish, he didn't celebrate wildly — just took a deep breath.

That night, at a celebratory karaoke session with his team, his training diary was left blank for the first time. The next morning, he filled several pages, repeating the same phrase: "Remember this feeling."

In June, at the Yulin meet, he lowered his PB again to 10.11. "This time," Deng said. "I finally felt steady. The 10.23 in 2023 felt like it fell from the sky — it was floating. The 10.18 and 10.11 this year were solid, achieved by climbing step by step. Now I'm beginning to see," he smiled.

"That the view on the climb is actually pretty beautiful."

liyingxue@chinadaily.com.cn