For hurdler Ang, life is a brilliant battle with time

0.01 is nothing to us. Just one-hundredth of a meaningless second. Faster than just another blink of the eye.

- Rohit Brijnath

But 0.01 is everything to Ang Chen Xiang, the record-setting 110m hurdler. So he'll give all his time just to find this tiny piece of time. He'll rise at 6am, do his core work, arrive at the National University Hospital at 8am, finish his rounds as a resident, decide on treatments, check scans, slog till 5pm, return to the track at 6pm, push his body till 8.30pm, have dinner, study, write reports, sleep at 11pm, day after gruelling day.

All this for just 0.01.

Going faster is a slow business. To find time you put in time. Ang recently met an athlete who was frustrated that her time wasn't dropping and he told her the truth about 0.01. You can't rush it. You work and trust and sweat and wait.

He knows this because in 2024 he learnt this lesson. "I was trying to qualify for the Olympics, which I failed to do. I was just trying too hard. You can't try too hard. You've got to put in the necessary work and just let it happen."

Even though, he'll tell you, the "truth" is that "it may not happen".

There's no signed agreement with some sporting god which guarantees sweat will translate into improvement. "A majority of time," says Ang, "you will fail as an athlete and just for tiny little moments you will succeed.