BEIJING — Liu Xiang and the entire nation of China looked forward to this moment for years: The defending Olympic champion lining up to run the 110-meter hurdles at the Beijing Games.
He didn’t even get to race.
Liu pulled up lame just steps into the first round of qualifying Monday, leaving the Summer Games’ host country without one of its biggest stars — and far and away its biggest star in track and field.
He limped out of the block at the starting gun, took a few awkward steps, then pulled up when the second gun sounded to signal a false start. No one is disqualified by an initial false start, yet Liu tore the pieces of paper with his number off each leg and immediately headed for a tunnel.
While the other entrants in his heat prepared for the restart, Liu took a slow walk along a concrete path leading away from the rust-colored track where he was supposed to thrill a nation.
Instead, he sat against a wall alone, that smiling face that adorns so many advertising billboards now sullen.
“We worked hard every day, but the result was as you see, and it’s really hard to take,” Liu’s personal coach, Sun Haiping, said at a news conference the hurdler did not attend.
Sun said Liu was bothered by a right foot injury that has lingered for six or seven years. Earlier, meet organizers issued a news release saying Liu withdrew because of the same hamstring injury that forced him to pull out at a meet in New York on May 31 — the same night Usain Bolt first broke the world record in the 100 meters.
A week later, Liu lined up for the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., but was disqualified for a false start. He hasn’t raced since.
The 25-year-old hurdler is as much a celebrity here as Houston Rockets center Yao Ming. Thursday night’s 110-meter hurdles final was expected to be one of the highlights of these Olympics: China’s Liu vs. Cuba’s Dayron Robles, the man who broke Liu’s world record in June — with 91,000 fans crowding into the Bird’s Nest to cheer on their man.
Instead, Robles, who won his heat in 13.39 seconds and well off his world record time of 12.87, will go in as the clear favorite.
And yet another of the top contenders departed Monday when two-time Olympic silver medalist Terrence Trammell of the United States grabbed the second hurdle and limped off the track with an injured left leg.
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