China's 37-year-old Lü XIaojun has broken the Olympics record and bagged gold in the men's 81kg weightlifting. This is the second gold on Sat for China and its 21st in total.Photo:Cui Meng/GT

The record-breaking performance by 37-year-old Olympic gold medalist Lü Xiaojun at the Tokyo Olympic Games is being celebrated by Chinese, many of whom expressed surprise at the weightlifter's overseas popularity. Lü set a new Olympic record after achieving a total score of 374 kilograms and bagged gold in the men's 81-kilogram weightlifting on Saturday afternoon. 

Lü's history as a champion has also attracted the admiration of massive numbers of fitness enthusiasts and weightlifting lovers from around the world who consider Lü a role model for the sport. On Saturday, one of the referees was caught on camera asking Lü for his signature.

Luke Thomas, a combat sports analyst with more than 120,000 followers on Twitter, also said in a post that he appreciated Lü's performance during the event, "putting 450lbs [204 kilograms] over your head is hard enough, but doing it by squat jerking requires ungodly balance and control."

Hollywood actor and professional wrestler John Cena also congratulated Lü when he won gold during the 77-kilogram event at the 2014 Asian Games, saying "congrats to Lü Xiaojun, Chinese super-athlete for his success at the 2014 Asian Games. Pretty amazing to watch."

Lü's training videos have been watched millions of times on YouTube, with the highest one, showing his daily training practices, earning a total of 4.29 million views.