KEY POINTS:
A dancer who was to take part in the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony has been paralysed.
Despite an attempted cover-up by organisers, the British Daily Telegraph has revealed that dancer Liu Yan fell over three metres and landed on her head and back.
The Yangtze Evening Newspaper reported Ms Liu was meant to be caught by other dances but instead she fell and dislocated her eleventh vertebrae, causing nerve and spinal damage.
She has now lost all feeling below her waist.
The story first broke in the Telegraph but the Beijing organising committee, Bocog, told the paper that Ms Liu had "only broken her leg".
The paper has also been told by sources inside the stadium that Ms Liu was left lying on the floor in agony for almost an hour while she waited for paramedics.
The source said paramedics had struggled to get through the security cordon.
The Telegraph has also reported that the Chinese organisers were warned about their safety measures at dance rehearsals but that the warnings were not listened to.
Zhang Yimou, the director of the opening ceremony, visited Ms Liu in hospital after she went through six hours of surgery.
"You're the deepest pain in my heart," Mr Zhang is reported as telling Ms Liu.
"If I could see you stand on your feet again, it would make me much more excited and happier than any praise I've received. You paid such a great price for the Olympic Games and for our country. This made me very, very heart-broken. We are very grateful to you, and so is our country. We hope you can actively cooperate with the medical treatment and recover as soon as possible," Mr Zhang said.
Ms Liu, speaking from her Beijing military hospital bed has not criticised the organisers.
"You guys [Zhang and his co-directors] have created a miracle for the world and I will do the same for all you three," she said.
Mr Zhang said he blamed himself for the dancer's injury at a press conference following the opening ceremony.
"If I asked them to be more careful on details, such [an accident] could have been avoided. I felt many things are still on my mind. I always felt I didn't do my job well," he said.
A Bocog spokesman has confirmed the accident but said they could not give details of Ms Liu's injuries.
The revelation of Ms Liu's injury comes after Chinese authorities admitted that some of the opening ceremony included computer graphics and the young singer Lin Miaoke was actually lip synching.
- NZHERALD STAFF
