Chinese Reaction to Liu Xiang Withdrawing From Olympics

Two weeks ago, people asked: What Will Happen If Liu Xiang Does Not Win The Gold Medal?

Yesterday at around 11:50am, Liu Xiang withdrew from the Olympics.

Most Chinese were very disappointed. Some were very sad. Some were very angry. Many Chinese people at the Bird’s Nest immediately stood up and left the stadium. Many other people cried.

Originally, I was not sure if I wanted to post about this so I did not. I thought many other news and websites already write so much. But thousands of BBS forum topics were created about Liu Xiang and about what happened. Chinese people throughout China talked about how they felt. There were a lot of upset people criticizing Liu Xiang but there were also a lot of people defending him and supporting him. Almost every topic was about Liu Xiang.

Liu Xiang’s coach, Sun Haiping, cried at a press conference.

This morning, all posts criticizing Liu Xiang were removed from the Chinese internet. But maybe these pictures are enough.

CCTV had an interview with Liu Xiang (Sohu or Ku6).

Baidu has a poll that was on their tieba.baidu.com front page:

Liu Xiang withdraws from competition, what is your view?

On the morning of August 18, an audience of 90,000 people gathered in the “Bird’s Nest” stadium, prepared to watch Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang’s performance. But, after the starter’s pistol went off, on Liu Xiang’s face, they saw a pained expression. He left the field lame and in low-spirits. Liu Xiang withdrew from the competition match. What do you think of this? If you have other opinions, please post.

Can understand
188339(23.8%)
Cannot understand
32568(4.1%)
Feel very disappointed
102777(13%)
Still support him
105552(13.3%)
No longer like him
185323(23.4%)
Wish him a fast recovery
160495(20.3%)
Not sure
17044(2.2%)

577,303 people participated in this poll (as of ~6:00pm).

These pictures come from some Mop, KDS, and the Strong Nation Forum at 163.com.

• A Strong Nation post with many links to other posts about Liu Xiang (Chinese).
• “China reeling after loss of Liu Xiang” from Yahoo.
• “Liu: Unbearable pain forced me out of Olympics” from Yahoo.
• “Liu Xiang speaks back” from China Daily.
• “Liu Xiang says he feels sorry, vowing to come back” from Xinhua.
• Liu XIang’s official website (Chinese).

“I want to let them see. I can still do it.”