China's badminton star Lin Dan shocked his fans on Thursday by publicly admitting that he had an affair while his wife was pregnant. The shocking news pushed thousands of Lin's fans on Chinese social media as they condemned their idol's misconduct.

"As a man, I won't make an excuse for myself. But my behaviour hurt my family, so here I am to apologise to my family, I'm sorry," Lin wrote in a short statement on his personal Weibo account, according to China's state media.

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Lin Dan's wife Xie Xingfang gave birth to their first child on Nov. 5.  Xie, a former two-time badminton world champion, is herself a famous badminton star across China.

The former world no. 1 made the news of his affair public after a Chinese blogger by the name "Detective Zhao" uploaded several photos of the badminton star with a so-called mystery woman. This mystery woman was later identified as model and actoress Zhao Yaqi.

China's state media quoted Detective Zhao as writing that "he went to a top restaurant in mid-September and unexpectedly saw Lin Dan with a woman and another man."

The blogger claims that the badminton star took the woman to her home after their dinner and stayed there for almost two hours.  The blogger further claims that he also spotted both flirting in a hotel room in October at Guangdong, where Lin was participating in a national badminton championship match.

Lin's wife Xie has so far not commented on the issue.

The badminton star, however, had to endure thousands of angry messages on China's twitter version Weibo.

"Of course you should apologise, and you deserve it that you'll never be forgiven," user zaoqilaibaMrmiao wrote. His post garnered close to 270,000 likes.

"Brother, do you know that you were the pride of 1.3 billion Chinese people? How about now?" wrote Cheng Hao Chen.

The news of the affair is mostly likely going to tarnish the reputation of Lin Din, who with several silverwares to his name had built a legendary status in China. The most notable achievements of his illustrious career are winning two Olympic gold medals and maintaining his World no.1 ranking for a considerable amount of weeks.

He, however, failed to win any medals at Rio Olympics 2016 and currently ranks as world no 3. 

TagsLin Dan, Super Dan, china, China badminton