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Hong Kong athletes heading for Asia Games bowled over by expertise of locals

The Hong Kong bowling team is receiving intensive training in Kaohsiung City, in the hope Taiwan's expertise in the sport will help it win trophies at the upcoming Asian Games.

"The ongoing training in Kaohsiung is noticeably effective for us and our performances are expected to improve in the days ahead," said team leader Ng Cheung-kok, who has been appointed the Hong Kong flag-bearer at the opening ceremony for the 14th Asian Games in South Korea's Busan City.

Meanwhile, with only 17 days to go before the Asian Games in South Korea, only 3.7 percent of the 2.7 million tickets available have been sold, organizers said yesterday.

About 54,000 tickets -- or more than half of the 99,000 tickets sold so far -- were for the championship match in men's soccer, said Kim Ju-han, a ticketing official at the games' organizing committee.

The popularity of soccer surged in South Korea after the nation finished fourth in this year's World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan. No Asian country had gone so far.

Supporters have also picked up 18,000 of the 35,000 tickets that were made available for the opening ceremony in the southern city of Busan which will feature athletes from South Korea and North Korea marching together, Kim said.

North Korea has agreed to send 318 athletes to the Asian Games as part of broader reconciliation

efforts between the two Koreas, which were divided in 1945 and fought the 1950 to 1953 Korean War, which ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

The border between the two countries is sealed and the communist North until now has never participated in an international sporting event held in the South.

Organizers are urging the host city's 3.8 million people to see at least one event.
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