In his last race of the year in Hong Kong, Liu won in 13.66sec -  his slowest time since his comeback from a foot injury that forced him out of the Beijing Olympics, but he had the luxury of slowing as he approached the finish line, comfortably beating the field.

The 26-year-old won gold at the Athens Olympics in 2004, then broke the world record in 2006, but shocked China by walking away from his first heat at the Olympics with a foot injury.

Having launched his comeback in September after surgery to repair his right Achilles’ tendon, all eyes are on whether he can recapture his old form, including regaining his world record from Cuba's Dayron Robles, who took a hundredth-of-a-second off Liu's old mark when he ran 12.87 in 1987.

Liu said: “Breaking the world record is very, very difficult.

"Improving by just 0.01 seconds is a very, very difficult thing to do.

"So I haven’t even thought about breaking the world record.

"If I think about it, it puts a lot of pressure on me.

“But I’m still confident that I can run under 13 seconds.

"I don’t necessarily have to break the world record. I’m now training with the goal of running under 13 seconds.”

Liu set a time of 13.15 in his first comeback race in Shanghai in September, then 13.34 at China’s National Games the following month, and 13.50 at the Asian Athletic Championships last month.

One of China’s biggest sports stars, Liu was the biggest attraction at the usually low-profile East Asian Games.

The partisan crowd at Tseung Kwan O Sports Ground in suburban Hong Kong cheered enthusiastically when Liu entered the stadium, warming up in a white T-shirt printed with the Chinese character for “xiang,” which translates to flight.


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