Chinese track star Liu needs up to a year to heal: officials

Chinese track star Liu Xiang will need six months to a year to recover from the foot injury that forced him out of the Beijing Olympics, officials said Wednesday.

Liu, who returned to his home in Shanghai last week, is consulting doctors before deciding with government sports chiefs on the best treatment, the Shanghai Sports Bureau's website quoted a senior official as saying.

"Experts will come out with a solution package in roughly one month, and it will be handed over to the state sports bureau to make a decision," said Yang Peigang, director of the Shanghai Athletics Training Centre.

All options were being considered, including sending Liu to the United States for treatment, Yang was quoted as saying.

A team of doctors, including several US orthopedics experts, are examining Liu's heel tendon injury, the Shanghai Morning Post reported, citing Chen Shiyi, one of Liu's doctors.

It would take at least six months and at most a year for Liu to recover, Chen said. However, the risk of the injury recurring was high, the report said.

Liu, one of China's greatest medal hopes before the Games, stunned his country when he withdrew from the 110m hurdles heats in an incident that became one of the defining moments of the Beijing Olympics.

The former world record holder and Athens Olympics champion said in a newspaper opinion piece last month that he believed he could stage a comback at next year's world championships and compete in the 2012 London Olympic Games.

"I will return to Shanghai and wait for my injury to heal completely. And then I will resume training. I believe I will win," the 25-year-old wrote in the Liberation Daily newspaper.