A former baseball star at the center of the 1996 betting scandal that rocked the domestic game has turned up in China.
Kuo Chien-chen (郭建成) was a ringleader of the infamous 1997 Taiwan game-fixing scandal and admitted accepting US$1.5 million from gangsters.
A former pitcher with the China Times Eagles and head of the players' association in the Chinese Professional Baseball League, Kuo received the heaviest sentence among the 22 players convicted -- 30 months in jail and a NT$3 million fine.
Kuo and the other convicted players were also slapped with lifetime bans, even though their cases are still on appeal.
The scandal led to the demise of the Eagles and a slump from which Taiwan pro baseball has only just recovered.
Five years later, Kuo is back on the mound. But not on home soil. He is now in China with the Tianjin Lions.
The 37-year-old Kuo earned the first save ever recorded in the new China Baseball League at the end of last month.
He also doubles as the Lions' pitching coach and was recently named as a coach on the Chinese national team.
And he's not the only banned Taiwanese player to find a new lease on life in China.
Former President Lion infielders Chiang Tai-chuan (江泰權) and Cheng Pai-sheng (鄭百勝) are also on the Tianjin coaching staff.
Chiang, who won a silver medal for Taiwan at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, was named the manager of the PRC national team with Cheng also joining as a coach.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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