ANKARA, Aug 6 (AFP) - Turkish runner Sureyya Ayhan, the reigning European women`s 1500 metres champion, has withdrawn from the Olympic Games due to injury, an official from the Turkish athletics federation said Friday.
"She has a torn muscle in the back of her leg. The doctors are not letting her compete," the federation`s deputy president Huseyin Yildirim told the NTV news channel.
Her doctor Tamer Coskun told the Anatolia news agency that she was suffering from inflammation of the right hamstring and could not run in Athens.
Ayhan, 25, was one of Turkey`s few hopes for gold in the Games which begin next Friday.
"She had prepared herself solely for the Olympics. She is very upset now and so are we," Yildirim added.
Ayhan became a national hero when she won the European title in Munich in 2002 after emerging from relative obscurity.
Last year she finished second in the World Championships in Paris, but she bounced back by setting the fastest time in the world in 2003 in the weeks that followed.
Despite immense popularity, Ayhan has also been the target of pulic criticism for her affair with her trainer Yucel Kop who discovered her as a talented schoolgirl in a small village in the central Turkish province of Corum.
Kop was married at the time the affair hit the press, but he has since divorced and tied the knot with Ayhan.