In the final, she clocked a time of 2:04.18, breaking Jessicah Schipper's world record by over 1 second, and won China's only gold medal in swimming at the Games.

Liu's win was considered a big upset, as she was relatively unknown prior to the Beijing Games.

[citation needed] Liu, nicknamed "Lucy," spent some time training under Jessicah Schipper's swimming coach, Ken Wood, and Wood sold Schipper's training program to Liu's coach.

[1] She would eventually beat Schipper and broke her world record in 200 meter butterfly during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

In 2009, Liu regained the 200m butterfly world record from Schipper at the Chinese National Games, with a time of 2:01:81[2] to win the gold medal.