SHATTERED DREAM: Liu Xiang leaves the track after failing to qualify in the men's 110-meter hurdles due to injury

We sat around the office TV watching. All work had ground to a halt. The Bird's Nest Olympic stadium was a full house and 90,000 pairs of eyes were glued to the track. No one even dared breathe. This wasn't even a final. Liu Xiang, the golden boy of Chinese sports, was setting himself up for the first 110-meter hurdles qualifying heat when he pulled up after a false start. As he limped off with an ankle injury, his departure was met with gasps of collective disbelief in the stadium and stunned silence in my office. I was as dumbstruck as everyone else.

To put it into perspective, you need to live in China to realize the extent of the Shanghai Bullet's popularity. Since winning the gold medal at the Athens Games four years ago, becoming China's first-ever male track gold-medal winner, Liu has gone on to mega national stardom.

He graces the cover of Newsweek and Sports Illustrated and his face is the first you see on advertising at any airport or train station in China. In cities across the country, on the sides of buses and on all of China's more than 50 TV channels with nationwide coverage, Liu can be found in ads for Nike, Coca Cola and Cadillac as well as domestic brand Yili dairies and controversially a foundation run by one of China's biggest cigarette manufacturers, Baisha. Only NBA basketball superstar Yao Ming rivals Liu for fame on the mainland. Liu now earns more than $24 million a year and travels with an entourage that checks his food, what he drinks and watches his every move. He is reportedly not even allowed to drive his own car in case of accident or injury. In a nutshell, Liu has been kept in cotton wool, all in preparation for the big day in Beijing-the 110-meter hurdles finals.

He is spoken about so often and with such reverence that it sometimes seemed the Olympics were Liu Xiang and he was the Olympics. China Daily reported that in a survey of more than 1 million Chinese carried out at the end of last year, the top Olympic dream was to witness Liu winning gold at the Bird's Nest stadium.