Breakthroughs were made at the World Championships, a long-standing national record was broken and the country's biggest hero came back to the track in 2009.

Those achievements have boosted confidence as the nation builds up for the 2012 London Olympics.

"The year 2009 was the starting point of our preparations for the London Games. The performances of the Chinese track-and-field athletes and the comeback of hurdler Liu Xiang have raised the morale of our whole team and we are much more confident going forward towards the Olympics," Du Zhaocai, director of China's Athletics Administrative Center (CAAC), told China Daily.

The return of star hurdler Liu in September was probably the crowning moment of China's track-and-field year.

After being absent from competition for 13 months, the former Olympic and world champion returned to the spotlight in emphatic fashion.

After more than a year of quiet rehabilitation on his right Achilles tendon, he came back with a bang - claiming three victories and a runners-up finish in the four events in which he participated.

"After having surgery in December last year, I didn't think this year could be so smooth, including the first race in Shanghai. I didn't know what kind of results I could expect before that," Liu said of his comeback. "I say thank you to all the people who supported me during the past 400 days. I'm very lucky that I could finally overcome the injury."

What was just as pleasing to Du was that even without Liu, China's track-and-field team performed well at the Berlin World Championships in August.

Spearheaded by a gold medal from women's marathoner Bai Xue, the Chinese team exceeded expectations at the Worlds, earning one gold, one silver and two bronze.

Bai's gold was the first for China in the event. Men's race walker Wang Hao also made history by claiming silver in the 20km walk. Women's walker Liu Hong won a bronze in the women's 20km and young thrower Gong Lijiao gave the country another surprise by winning bronze in the women's shot put.

The performance was considered the second best by a Chinese team at the World Championships.

Gong, 20, continued her good form at the National Games in October, where she won with a personal best of 20.35m, the second best distance in the world last year. Also at the National Games, 25-year-old Li Yanxi broke the 28-year-old national men's triple jump record with a leap of 17.59m.

However, Du remains clear headed despite these remarkable achievements.

"Although some young athletes finished with good results last year, they are still not powerful enough to claim any world titles easily," he said.

"We lack overall depth. Even in our strong events, such as race walking, there were only 10 athletes competing at the National Junior Championships last year, which shows we lack young talent."

To deal with the situation, Du said the CAAC had set up about 100 training bases throughout the country to identify talent.

"We have to face reality and take measures to solve the problem," Du said.

This year, the Continental Cup in Croatia in September and the Asian Games in China's Guangzhou in December loom as the two most important events for the Chinese team, which started its winter training camps last month.

Foreign coaches have been invited to join the camps and the walkers and women's middle and long distance runners will train in Italy and Kenya later this month.