Running, swimming and other short-distance competitions are unfair because of the large number of participants, short time, so every player has the opportunity to be eliminated step by step in the preliminaries, semi-finals and finals. Because the starting gun has three rounds, it is commonly known as the three-gun competition system.

Liu Xiang's game:

August 7th (local time 10: 10, Beijing time on August 7th17:10)10 meter hurdles preliminaries.

August 8th (local time 19: 15, Beijing time the next day 2:15)10 meter hurdles semi-final.

August 8th (local time 2 1: 15, Beijing time the next day 4:15)10 meter hurdles final.