Word: liu
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...volleyball, in which the country's women placed ninth in Athens. This time around, China's red-bikini-clad sand spikers are guaranteed either gold or silver in the Aug. 21 final against the U.S. On Aug. 18 - the same day as when China's great male hope, hurdler Liu Xiang, flopped in the qualifiers - Chinese women quietly triumphed on the trampoline and uneven bars...
After winning a surprise gold medal in the 110-m hurdles in Athens four years ago, Liu morphed from amiable jock into national stud. In 2006 he shattered the event's world record with his 12.88 time. As an Asian athlete competing in a klieg-light track event - not an international sideline sport like badminton or table tennis or synchronized diving - Liu came to personify the Chinese nation's rising ambitions. The pressure for a golden repeat in China's Games must have been overwhelming...
Before the opening ceremony on Aug. 8, there was frenzied speculation in the Chinese blogosphere about who would carry China's flag and who would light the Olympic flame. The two obvious candidates were hoops star Yao Ming and hurdling legend Liu. When Yao loped in front of the massive Chinese Olympic team with the Chinese flag held aloft, the audience naturally thought Liu would carry the final torch. But that honor went instead to retired gymnast and sports-clothing tycoon Li Ning. Liu didn't even march with the Chinese Olympic delegation. Where...
Earlier this spring, Liu had disappeared from public view, nursing a sore hamstring that led him to pull out of a May race and triggered another injury to his Achilles tendon. By the start of the summer, the protective cocoon around the hurdler had reached epic proportions. In June, Dayron Robles, a bespectacled Cuban, shaved one-hundredth of a second off of Liu's world record. The Chinese was going into the Beijing Olympics as the underdog. (Robles easily won his Beijing heat less than an hour before Liu was scheduled to compete, while medal contender Terrence Trammell...
...press conference shortly after Liu pulled out, Liu's coach Sun Haiping, who has mentored the Shanghai-born athlete since he was a child, dissolved into tears. Dabbing his eyes with a tissue, he described how Liu's hamstring and Achilles tendon had caused excruciating pain and how sports hospital staff had tried intensive massage to heal the injuries. But it was of no use. The throbbing, exacerbated by a training session two days before, was so severe that the hurdler was shivering during rehab treatments. Liu was determined to compete unless the pain was "intolerable," said Feng Shuyong, China...