https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNpM8aprNHk
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As is so often the case when the Chinese star Liu Xiang hurdles, it was difficult to avoid the bigger picture on Tuesday. It was hard not to imagine the millions upon millions watching in his homeland, mouths agape and hands to their faces, stunned as Liu lay on the London track in pain, another Olympics over for him in a flash.
For nearly a decade now, since he burst onto the international scene in 2004, Liu has been as much a symbol as he has been a competitor, representing China’s, even Asia’s, global sports aspirations.

It has long been a great deal for one athlete to bear, and with the benefit of hindsight it seems logical that his only Olympic medal came in his first Games, in 2004, when the symbolism had yet to snowball into something closer to that “monster” pressure that the Swiss tennis superstar Roger Federer once complained about.

In 2004, Liu was healthy, running free and still an outsider. The favorite in the 110-meter hurdles then was Allen Johnson, the veteran American. But Johnson stumbled out of those Olympics in the quarterfinals, and in the final, Liu — with his formidable technique and youthful exuberance — beat everyone to the finish line to equal the world record of 12.91 seconds.

He was the first Chinese man to win an Olympic gold medal in track. His victory served as proof that a nation that had been stockpiling victories in diving and table tennis could compete in a mainstream, truly global event that had traditionally been dominated by sprinters from North America and Europe.

There would be other triumphs to come for Liu: another world record in 2006, and world indoor and outdoor titles. But at 29, he is now most indelibly linked with two races that were hardly races at all.

At the 2008 Games in Beijing, Liu walked onto the track to warm up for his first round and was soon grabbing at his right heel, wincing in pain and removing the lane numbers affixed to each of his thighs.

As the heat began without him, he sat slumped against a wall in the Bird’s Nest Stadium that was supposed to have been the grand, avant-garde setting for a resounding Chinese triumph, the country’s equivalent of Australia’s Cathy Freeman victory in Sydney in 2000.

Flash forward to Tuesday, where Liu made it out of the starting blocks in the first round but then fell at the first hurdle as his left heel on his lead leg struck the barrier in lane 4 and he went tumbling to the track. For an athlete as finely tuned and experienced as Liu, it was too blatant a mistake to have been purely a miscalculation.

Feng Shuyong, head of the Chinese track and field team, later explained that the initial diagnosis was that Liu had ruptured his right Achilles tendon again, perhaps on the takeoff for that first hurdle. But Feng indicated that further medical confirmation was required.

“The injury is the same one he had in Beijing,” Feng said at a news conference. “In the last several years he has had good medical care, but it is still there. An Achilles injury is almost impossible to recover from fully.”

It has been another triumphant Olympics for the Chinese. Late Tuesday, they still led the gold-medal and overall medal counts. Stars like the men’s badminton player Lin Dan and the swimmer Sun Yang have fulfilled hopes and expectations by winning in London.