As one of the most popular sports feast, the World Cup is entertaining dozens of millions of soccer fans in China. But, unfortunately, some fans also paid the price for getting too excited.

A heavy truck carring full load of construction materials rammed into a trailer on Shanghai-Ningbo highway on Wednesday, for the driver was rushed back for the World Cup semi-final game.

"I didn't sleep well for watching the World Cup. I have been driving for six hours to head back for the semi-final before the crash. I thought I might have fallen asleep while driving," the driver surnamed Zhang told the police.

Police said Zhang's truck was "hopelessly damaged" after the crash.

Previously, local media reported a girl had jumped off an apartment building for a brawl with her boyfriend on World Cup matches.

The jump was deadly, said West China Metropolitan Daiy, a local daily in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan Province, adding that she was just an extreme case of many "victims" of the World Cup in China.

For most of soccer fans, staying up very late to watch the games and the habit of drinking a lot while watching increase the possibilities of many kinds of diseases, such as heart attacks, hypertension, prosopospasm and acute gastroenteritis, health experts claimed.

Wang Jie, director of the Emergency Section at Beijing Armed Police General Hospital, warned soccer fans of records of cardiovascular disease and urged them to stay calm and avoid sitting up overnight for watching the matches.

"Hanging around my favorite bar and enjoying the matches with friends is really cool. But, look, my belly is popping up", a TV station reporter surnamed Fu in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, told Xinhua in a telephone interview. "It really bothered me. And I was tired everyday. Headache is also a problem, " he said.

(China Daily July 6, 2006)