00:00When the Olympic record holder stumbled and brutally slammed into the track during the
00:04semi-finals for the 110 meter hurdles, it seemed like China might actually have a chance of getting
00:09their first ever Olympic medal in the event. After he won gold medals in competitions all over Asia
00:15and he broke the Asian record two years earlier, the Chinese fans were out in force for Liu Zhang.
00:21So as the race set off and Liu powered ahead of all the other runners, there really was no stopping
00:26him. Liu thought he'd achieved everything he could ever want. He'd set a new Olympic record and he'd
00:32won China's first ever Olympic gold medal in men's track and field. And as Liu returned home a hero,
00:38it felt like life would just keep on getting better. The Chinese government even gave his
00:42parents an apartment and his dad was given unlimited leave from work to support his son. At first,
00:48Liu enjoyed the attention and the appreciation for what he'd accomplished. He started accepting
00:52sponsorship offers and he started making more money than he'd ever seen in his life. But it didn't
00:58really change much for Liu. After all, with his intense training regime and the expectation that
01:03he would continue to bring glory to China, he never really had much time to enjoy his riches.
01:09In the years that followed, Liu Zhang continued excelling, breaking the world record in 06 and winning
01:14the world championships in 07, making him the first man in hurdles to ever hold all three titles at once.
01:21But as China prepared for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the insatiable fervor around Liu became very
01:27uncomfortable. He couldn't go to the shops without being swarmed, he started losing touch with his
01:32family and friends, and his coach Sun Haiping had dedicated his entire life to training Liu,
01:38even being quoted as saying that he regards Liu as his son and he doesn't even care about his own
01:43daughter as much as he does for Liu. Sun was also reportedly told by Chinese officials that
01:49nothing less than victory would be acceptable in Beijing, and that if Liu couldn't win,
01:54it would make everything that he'd done before completely meaningless. Liu's incredible success
01:59had created an obsession and an expectation from his country that he couldn't possibly live up to.
02:05And as if the pressure wasn't already intense enough, Liu was shaken when just two months before
02:11the games, his world record was broken by a hundredth of a second by Cuban hurdler Dairon Robles.
02:17Liu trained harder than he'd ever done before in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics. However,
02:22when it came to his preliminary heat, as he lined up, something was clearly wrong. As the starter pistol
02:27fired, there was a false start, and by the time the other runners lined up again for the restart,
02:33Liu was nowhere to be seen.
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