Lin Dan serial affairs: Wife Xie Xingfang breaks silence, says will 'weather this storm'

Xie posted a beautiful picture of them holding hands with their infant son in Weibo

Lin Dan
Lin Dan, who is a six-time All England champion, clinched his first Olympic singles gold at home in 2008. Reuters

Lin Dan's wife Xie Xingfang has finally broken her silence over shuttler husband's affairs, saying she will support the two-time Olympic champion.

Xie, who is herself a two-time world champion in women's singles badminton, took to the Chinese microblogging website Weibo to show her support for her husband, who has been accused of serial infidelity.

She posted a beautiful picture of them holding hands with their infant son, accompanied by a heart-warming message. "Our family will support this man who takes responsibilities for his actions and is willing to correct his mistakes," she wrote. "I thank friends and fans for your concern. Our family will weather this storm together," she added.

Lin, the badminton ace, created a buzz when his two affairs, one with a model and one with a badminton player at a Beijing university, surfaced back to back last week.

A Weibo user identified a 'Detective Zhao' posted some intimate photos of the badminton champion with the model, whom netizens identified as Zhao Yaqi on Weibo on 17 November. Lin Dan took to the website and apologised for cheating on his wife when she was pregnant with their child. "As a man, I do not make any excuses for myself, but my actions have hurt my family. I apologise to them here," wrote Dan in a post written in Chinese.

However, it seems that old habits die hard for the badminton sensation. Just after two days of the first scandal, his got embroiled in another one. It was reported that the Beijing university student identified as Li Zhi deleted several pictures of herself and Lin Dan from the same social networking site.

Super Dan has not got back to court after his campaign in Rio de Janeiro in August, in which he lost to Danish shuttler Viktor Axelsen in the bronze medal match shortly after going down against Malaysia's Lee Chong Wei in the semi-final. Dan has also missed the China Open badminton which ended on Sunday with the Chinese shuttlers failing to win even one title for the first time in the 30-year-history of the tournament.