August 19, 2008	Tuesday	Sha’aban 16, 1429

BEIJING, Aug 18: When Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang hobbled off the track in front of stunned home fans in Beijing on Monday, he proved the rule that at least one big name of the host nation will always be a let-down at the Olympics.

With his withdrawal before the 110m hurdles, Liu, the biggest athletics medal hope for China’s 1.3 billion, showed how tears of sorrow are just as much a part of the Games as tears of joy.

Mary Slaney, then Mary Decker, will be forever remembered by athletics fans for what she failed to achieve in front of a fiery home crowd at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics.

Decker was the hot favourite to win the 3,000m, after an outstanding 1983 World Championships that saw her win the “Decker double”, the 1,500 and 3,000.

But her medal hope ended in tears about halfway through the race when she collided with runner Zola Budd, went down injured on the track and saw the pack speed away.

More recently at the Sydney 2000 Games, race walker Jane Saville was having the race of her life.

In the 20km, Saville was in her stride, fired up by the crowd lining the route leading up to the stadium.

But with certain gold only metres from her grasp as she descended the tunnel leading onto the track inside the Olympic stadium, the Sydney native was given her third and final warning for failing to make continuous contact with the ground, leading to immediate disqualification.

Shocked and reduced to tears on the spot, Saville asked for a gun “to shoot myself”.

Four years later at the Athens Olympics, Greece was preparing to celebrate a sprint double with their biggest medals hopes, sprinters Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou getting ready for the 200 metres and 100 metres respectively.

They never even made it to the stadium. Their home Olympics dreams were squandered on the eve of the opening ceremony when they missed a drugs test.

The thousands of fans who had snapped up tickets months in advance were left chanting their names as the athletes took up their positions on the starting blocks without them.

Sometimes the gold medal failures can be that big they usurp the whole Olympic team.

In a stunning and unique record, Canada, hosts of the 1976 Montreal Games, never had the pleasure of hearing their national anthem played in their own sports arena because Canada did not win a single gold.

As if that was not bad enough they repeated the feat eight years later at the Calgary Winter Games.

“In the long run it is all just sport and you have to put it in perspective,” Saville said some time after her flop. “So we’ll just go out and have some fun.”

—Reuters