Huang Yu-ting was the nation’s golden girl last night at the Yangming Skating Rink as she won Taiwan’s first gold of the World Games in the women’s 300m speed rollerskating final.
Huang crossed the line in a time of 27.67 seconds, beating her compatriot Hsu Chiao-jen into second place and a silver medal by just .006 seconds.
Taiwan’s second gold medal followed just 30 minutes later in the men’s final, with Lo Wei-lin finishing ahead of the field in 25.55 seconds.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s quest for a korfball medal got off to a good start at Kaohsiung Normal University Gymnasium with a hard-fought 26-19 victory over Portugal.
The first half was a fast-paced affair with Taiwan’s better distance shooting paying off, helping them to a 10-8 lead at the break.
After the interval, Taiwan pulled away led by six goals from Chiu Chih-yi and five from Lin Hsiu-yun to secure the win.
Earlier in the day at the Lide Baseball Stadium, Taiwan’s softball team had an easy opener in the preliminary round, racing to an 11-0 lead in the first three innings against Canada.
The game was called off with the score unchanged after five innings because of the mercy rule.
Taiwan won the second game against Japan 2-0, although the result had not been declared official at press time last night.
In the fistball over at Chung Cheng Stadium, Taiwan struggled in the hot, humid conditions against superior opposition.
Taiwan’s team was formed within the last four years and the inexperience of the players showed against their more accomplished opponents, although they couldn’t be faulted for their effort.
In their first game against a strong Brazil line-up, they went down in three sets 11-4,11-5,11-4.
Later, against Germany, Taiwan dropped the first set 11-3, before improving in the second, but too many basic errors and a vulnerability to the drop shot cost them dearly, as they went down 11-5.
The third set started brightly with Taiwan actually leading 3-2 at one point before Germany’s strength began to tell. The Europeans eventually wrapped up the match by taking the third set 11-5.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier