The criticism on the gold obsession has been ongoing since China kicked off the Beijing Games on Aug. 8, with some former champions or gold hopes crumpling under pressure. These included Zhu and fellow shooter Du Li, who finished fifth after winning gold in the women's 10 meter air rifle in 2004.

The woman was caught sobbing on TV during an interview after the competition, saying she had really tried hard.

The words of "Du Li, don't cry" were voiced in thousands of Internet posts, apart from gift cards sent to her with warm encouragement. One of them, sent by a girl named Li Ziyi, was a photo of Du, together with a red heart, a small rainbow and the words "Sister, we take pride in you."

"They are just simple gifts, but I was touched," Du said.

The backlash on the unbearable pressure of a country with 1.3 billion people focusing too much on gold medals reached a climax after Liu's pullout.

On Monday afternoon, netizen "vivi6969" launched an online campaign calling on people to show their support for Liu by each replying to the topic with the sentence "we love Liu Xiang, not the gold medal." The post had drawn more than 200,000 clicks by Tuesday noon.

With the best hope of a nation on him, Liu failed to escape Internet criticism and anger. Some speculated he folded under pressure instead of the tendon pains, while others argued he should have held on despite injury. Such views met calls by the Chinese media, athletes and bloggers to place the health of the athletes first and rethink the nation's obsession with gold medals.

The country had 42 gold medals as of Tuesday, well above the U.S. count of 25 and already exceeding its record at the Athens Games.

The People's Daily, a newspaper of the Communist Party of China, published a commentary on Tuesday, saying Liu's withdrawal was a test to the Chinese audience.

"We can never rigorously force athletes to do what's beyond their capability but should treat successes and failures with a broad mind," Luo Xuejuan, an Olympic gold medalist swimmer at Athens, told Xinhua in an e-mail. She was totally on Liu's side and had deep sympathy for him as she had also suffered injury before.

"Athletes have no power to stop injuries or foresee them. Liu has made great achievements in the past four years and should feel no regret as a sports hero."

Huang Jianxiang, a TV sports commentator, said in his blog that Liu and his head coach had made a scientific decision according to the law of sports and criticized those blaming the hurdler.

"Do we really understand sports and the Olympic spirit, or do we just need this track and field gold to save face?" he wrote.

(Xinhua News Agency August 20, 2008)