LONDON: Even as he announced he had leapt the last hurdle in his trailblazing athletics career, Liu Xiang, China's pioneering sports hero, still appeared to be tormented by a nagging thought.

In the retirement statement released on his microblog on Tuesday, Liu, looking back with “reluctance” on the nightmarish experience at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, could not help but ask the old question: “Why did I let the Chinese people down?”

The answer, it should now be asserted one last time, is that Liu, the greatest track and field athlete the world's most populous nation has ever produced, never did let anyone down. Least of all himself.

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua enshrined the 31-year-old on Tuesday as “a tragic hero” and it is easy to understand why.

Because, for all of his greatness as an athlete who achieved the sport's ultimate goals of world and Olympic titles and a world record, his freeze-frame moments may well always be his two most conspicuous failures -- the two Olympic non-races in Beijing and London four years apart.

They were both extraordinarily dramatic and poignant. In 2008, the triumph of Liu, the world and Olympic champion, was going to be the landmark symbol of China's Games, the moment when their 6ft 3in phenomenon with the freakish, explosive talent that Asian athletics had never seen before would bound to gold.

Instead, struggling desperately with the agony of his “hateful” take-off foot, the poster boy's Games ended with him failing even to take part in his heat after a false start.

It honestly felt like the greatest anti-climax in Olympic annals, China's misery absolutely palpable in the Bird's Nest Stadium.

Nobody who witnessed the tears of Liu's coach Sun Haiping that day, nor Liu's own gaunt features, could fail to appreciate the suffocating pressure he had been under as the focus of more than a billion dreams. In comparison, Australia's Cathy Freeman, in Sydney, and Briton Jessica Ennis, in London, were at a summer fete.

Liu's stoicism in the face of the subsequent criticism from home that he had somehow been too weak to live with the expectation was nothing but admirable.

HONOURABLE FIGURE

In truth, after all the injury struggles he faced post-2008, Xiang should not even have attempted to run in London in 2012 but he was such an honourable figure, so desperate to make amends for Beijing and make China proud, he attempted the impossible.

When he crashed at the first hurdle, the subsequent sight of him hopping down trackside to complete the distance and symbolically moving across to kiss the last barrier told of his rare spirit. It was to be his last act in competition.

One Chinese commentator was in tears as he reported the news to a bereft nation. Xiang's face, though, remained unmoved. He always was a tough one.

“If my foot wasn't injured, I unfortunately in this world there are no ifs. I brought about the injury myself and I can only silently accept it,” mused Liu in his farewell declaration.

It seemed typical of the uncomplaining way he accepted his wretched luck of the last six years. If he had steered clear of injury, surely he would have lowered his old world record of 12.88 seconds to a figure in the region of Aries Merritt's current mark of 12.80.

Ultimately, China recognised that he gave everything. Forget those last difficult years; his compatriots were energised by the way Liu, like basketball giant Yao Ming and grand slam tennis champion Li Na, gave them the fresh taste of decorating big-time global sport.

All three have now retired and Liu will not be forgotten as the man who made them cheer and cry.

“You shouldn't bear too much burden,” one of his admirers assured him on social media in response to Liu's retirement blog.

“Thank you for all of the beautiful moments you have given us.”

It was time to forget the tragic hero and just remember the hero.