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Liu of China Crashes Out of 110-Meter Men’s Hurdles

Daniel Ochoa De Olza/Associated Press
China's Liu Xiang, second from left, ran into the first hurdle during a men's 110-meter hurdles heat onTuesday.
By ANDREW DAS
Published: August 7, 2012
LONDON — The champion hurdler Liu Xiang, the most prominent athlete from China competing in the London Games, suffered another painful Olympic exiton Tuesday morning.
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DiegoAzubel/European Pressphoto Agency
Liu Xiang of China was frustrated in the hurdles for the second consecutive Olympic Games.
Four years after Liu had to withdraw from the men’s 110-meter hurdles in theBeijing Olympics, devastating his millions of adoring fans in China, he left the competition here without clearing a single hurdle in a preliminary heat. Just as in 2008, an Achilles tendon injurywas his undoing.
Liu, a former world-record holder in the event and the gold medal winner at the 2004 Athens Games, drove his left foot into the first hurdle and tumbled to the track, grasping hislower right leg.
He lay on the track, then rose and hopped toward the exit before returning to hop quickly up the track next to the hurdles on his left leg, symbolically finishing the race. When heneared the finish, he crossed back onto the track and kissed the final hurdle in his lane.
A leader of China’s track and field team, Feng Shuyong, said tests at a hospital were needed to confirm theinitial diagnosis that Liu had torn his right Achilles tendon.
“For that to happen to one of the greatest hurdlers of all time is a tragedy,” said Aries Merritt of the United States, who qualified for...