OLYMPIC

BEIJING, China (AP) -- 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.
China's Liu Xiang pulls up lame Monday during his qualifying heat for the men's 110-meter hurdles.
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He didn't even get to race.
Already grimacing before getting into his crouch, 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 of 1.3 billion people.
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.