Bryant: Losing Liu to injury saddens Chinese

BEIJING • We don't have a national sports hero, at least not the way China has Yao Ming.

Likewise we don't have a Liu Xiang either.

It will be difficult for us to understand what happened to Chinese citizens when injury took their hero before he had a chance to don his cape.

Houston Rockets center Yao is undoubtedly China's biggest sports star.

Liu is second.

But in the National Stadium where track and field events take place until the end of the XXIX Olympic Games, Liu was the star. He was the one many in the crowd came to see.

For the Chinese, Liu, not Yao was more important to these Olympic Games. There was no realistic expectation that Yao would lead the Chinese basketball team to Olympic gold and glory. But the Chinese had every expectation that Liu would bring them gold in the 110-meter hurdles.

China had long possessed an inferiority complex to the West in track and field events. Swimming, diving, table tennis, weight lifting and gymnastics were their specialties.

Then Liu came along, shocking the world with his gold medal performance at the Athens Olympics. He backed up the gold with a world record 12.88-second effort in the 2006 World Championships.

Liu was no fluke.

One athlete simultaneously shattered a myth and filled a country of 1.3 billion with pride. Liu beat American star Terrence Trammell on his way to gold in Athens. He beat Trammell in the World Championships, too. Beating the West only made the victory sweeter for the Chinese.

Today the Chinese share feelings of shock, awe and disappointment.

"All of China is sad for Liu Xiang," Beijing resident Li Yi said through an interpreter. Li then pointed to his heart. "He is a great athlete. I hurt for him. I hurt here."
Liu hurt enough on his own.

In the tunnel before the race, Liu stretched his calves. He kicked a wall several times, frustration on his face was evident. There was more stretching, more kicking and some stomping too.

"In watching warm-ups, we could see that he wasn't quite as strong as you expect him to be," Great Britain's Colin Jackson said. "But we didn't know it was as bad as it turned out to be."

Nobody did.

Fans were left agape. Chinese journalists and volunteers cried - hardly none more than Sun Haiping, Liu's coach, during the news conference.

"He has two injuries, one to the leg and one to the foot," Sun said. "The one to the leg has been an accumulative injury for years, but it was cured. The major problem for this withdrawal is his heel. I don't know when it was hurt, probably six or seven years ago, before Athens. The injury has been back and forth between intensive training and rest."

To the fans here, Liu's commercial visibility is like Michael Jordan in his heyday. He's on billboards everywhere. There's a Cadillac dealership in the northern part of the city that has a monstrous picture of Liu's head and shoulders looking over the vehicles. Music videos, Nike, television commercials - and get this, his legs were insured for close to $13 million.

That might not sound like much in the States. We see athletes on everything all the time. But here, there are two - Yao and Liu.

"Four years after Athens his main goal was Beijing gold, and he has done great work for it," said Feng Shouyong, China's track and field coach. "Today's result is not perfect, especially for Liu Xiang. There is a great expectation and a great pressure from all. For the past four years Liu Xiang has been an athlete with great stability who never drops out of competition easily."

Several hours after Liu walked off the track, volunteers in the media venue area - where televisions were supposed to be monitoring the happenings in the stadium - were watching table tennis instead.

For them and the rest of China, the thrill is gone. Sure, the stands in the Games' signature venue will be filled, but that'll be because they have to be filled.

Liu made the Chinese want to fill them.