The best of world sports in 2008

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Shock retirement

Former women's tennis No 1 Justine Henin shocked her fans and peers alike when she announced her retirement from the sport on May 14, 2008. Henin, who was the top-ranked women's tennis player at the time of her retirement won 41 WTA singles titles, including seven Grand Slams in her career. Henin also won the WTA Tour Championships twice and the singles gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics.

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Long-distance champs

Ethiopian long-distance runners Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba both created history at the Beijing Summer Games. Dibaba created Olympic history when she won the long distance double of 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres. This was the first time in 28 years that such a feat had been achieved. Dibaba shattered the Olympic record in the 10,000 metres as she won in a time of 29min 54.66sec, taking 23 seconds off the previous mark. Bekele became the first male athlete since Miruts Yifter in 1980 to win the 5,000 metres-10,000 metres Olympic double at Beijing. During the course of his gold medal-winning effort in the 5,000 metres, Bekele not only erased one of the oldest Olympic records from the books, but he also ran the first sub-13 minutes over this distance in Olympic history.

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Dominating men's tennis

Rafael Nadal, was ranked below then No 1 Roger Federer for a record 160 weeks, but there was a subtle wind of change blowing from the start of the year. While Nadal was picking up momentum, Federer was battling an illness in get match-fit. However, Nadal had the determination and game this year as he finally displaced Federer as the No 1 on August 18, 2008. In many ways, this was Nadal's best year on the ATP Circuit as he not only became the first player in the Open era to have won the French Open, the London Queen's club, and Wimbledon in the same year, but also won the gold medal in the men's singles at the 2008 Beijing Summer Games.With his one-sided win over Federer in the French Open final, Nadal became only the second man after Bjorn Borg to win four consecutive championships at Roland Garros. Nadal also clinched the year-end World No. 1 ranking for 2008, and was also given the Prince of Asturias Award for his achievements in sports.But, Nadal was forced to miss the season-ending Masters Championship and Spain's Davis Cup final against Argentina, because of a knee injury.

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Finishing on top

Jelena Jankovic is the only woman tennis player to be ranked No 1 without winning a Grand Slam title. But, she was one of the most consistent players on the WTA tour in 2007 and carried that form in to 2008 as well. Jankovic played 84 singles matches this year, of which she won 65. Jankovic also won four WTA singles titles in 2008 -- Rome, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow. She lost to Serena Williams in the US Open final, and reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open and French Open, and fourth round at Wimbledon.

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Injury woes

Liu Xiang, the 110-metres hurdler, had th expectations of a whole country on his shoulders leading to the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. However, Liu was unable to compete and had to withdraw before the first-round heat because of a recurrence of chronic inflammation in his right Achilles tendon. Liu had surgery to repair the injury in the first week of December 2008.