Former Olympic and world champion Liu Xiang saw the number of his microblog followers rise to 7.3 million after he achieved an Asian Games treble in the 110m hurdles.

The 27-year-old posted a picture of him in a uniform in his military drill after his competition here, which drew nearly 5,000 comments either praising him "adorable" or "good looking".

But not all the athletes could enjoy the intimacy with fans through microblog, which quickly became the most popular and fashionable way for Chinese to post about topics ranging from the simple, such as "what I'm doing right now," to the thematic, such as "national sport system".

International goalkeeper Wang Dalei was the negative example. Wang blurted abusive words on his microblog and soccer fans retaliated in following replies after the national team's 3-0 humiliation by Japan in their first group match.

The incident led to Wang's ban and showed the influence of the new media. According to a market research report, 2.58 million topics about the Asian Games were posted in the microblogs on t.sina.com.cn alone.

 (Xinhua News Agency November 27, 2010)