GUANGZHOU, China - A year after his dramatic withdrawal from the Beijing Olympics, Liu Xiang is attempting a comeback that has again brought hope and anxiety to the Chinese public.

It was last August when the Chinese hurdler limped away from the track with a foot injury, breaking the hearts of hundreds of millions of fans who wanted to see him defend his Olympic title at home.

Now, the 26-year-old hurdler- one of China's biggest sports stars ever - plans to compete Sunday for the first time since. He's scheduled to run the 110-metre hurdles in his hometown at the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix.

"There is a degree of risk, but I think I can compete at this point,'' Liu told reporters Friday in Shanghai.

"The recovery after the surgery is very good. If it has not recovered well, I would not come out to compete.''

The risk of whether Liu's repaired Achilles tendon will withstand a comeback, or whether he can ever return to his best, is one that is being closely watched by his past corporate backers.

Before the Shanghai event, he hasn't been surrounded by the loud drumbeat of advertising hype that preceded the Beijing Games. Back then, Liu's face seemed ubiquitous in TV ads and billboards selling everything from Coca Cola, Visa credit cards and Nike sneakers to Lenovo computers and China Mobile telephone service.

Chris Renner, president for China of sports marketing agency Helios Partners, said that Liu is still seen as a national treasure for winning China's first men's Olympic gold medal on the track in Athens four years ago.

But Renner said the hurdler and Chinese sports officials are being cautious about how they manage his comeback.

"They're saying he's been running test runs on the hurdles, and his best run has been a second off of his personal best, which is huge, in competition terms,'' Renner said.

"They're also trying to say to people that this is just his coming out. He's going to test it out, see how it's going, but by no means are we expecting him to win the event, let alone set any new records.''

Liu's most formidable competitor will likely be American Terrence Trammell, an Olympic silver medallist in 2000 and 2004 as well as a silver medallist in the World Championships in 2003, 2007 and 2009.

Other top competitors slated for the Shanghai event include Kenya's Wilfred Bungei, Olympic champion in the men's 800 metres in 2008 and Bahrain's Yusuf Saad Kamel, 2009 world champion in the men's 1,500 metres.

On the women's side, American Allyson Felix, will run the 200 metres - an event she won in the world championship in 2005, 2007 and 2009 and Russian Yelena Isinbayeva - who has broken the world record 27 times in her career - will compete in the pole vault.

When Liu announced he was abandoning the Beijing Games, his coaches stood nearby weeping. He was kept off the track by an injured right Achilles' tendon, which his coaches hoped to heal with deep massage and traditional Chinese medicine.

In December, Liu underwent surgery in Houston, Texas, where four small pieces of bone were removed from the tendon.

Although Liu's coaches reported that his training was going well, they said they weren't rushing him and he skipped last month's world championship in Berlin.

"His recovery in recent weeks has been extremely fast. When he heard from the doctors that his foot had no problems, it dropped the load and burden from his mind,'' his longtime coach, Sun Haiping, told reporters.

Sun had warned in June that a further injury would "certainly end his career once and for all.''

Liu's yearlong absence from the track has taken a severe financial toll on him, according to a study by the China Brand Research institute. The independent institute said in a study released in March that before his injury, Liu was being paid 15 million yuan per product endorsement. But since his injury, the average rate has dropped to 2 million yuan.

The study also said that Liu's contracts with 12 brands have recently expired, and the only one to renew a contract was Nike. The others wanted to wait to see how his comeback develops, it said.