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Taekwondo athletes today aim for the elusive gold medal

The entire Taiwanese delegation to the Olympic Games and, no doubt, many members of the Taiwanese public, will spend today in a state of anticipation as two top Taiwanese taekwondo athletes, Chu Mu-yen (朱木炎) and Chen Shih-hsin (陳詩欣), prepare to go for gold this evening.

Chu, who has been described as a "warlord of Taiwan," has never been beaten in the last two years and is considered unrivaled, even by fighters from the home of taekwondo, South Korea, who fear him in competition.

Chu, in the Under-58kg category, and Chen, in the Under-49kg category, are both scheduled to compete in the preliminary rounds this morning, and are expected to advance to the final round to be decided at midnight, Taipei time.

The international sports media and the sports fraternity in Taiwan believe that Chu is the man to beat for the gold medal. But it is the dark shadow of subjective factors influencing the results of the competition, which has bedeviled taekwondo for several decades that could be the main factor destroying Taiwan's dreams of gold.

"In the past 10 years or so, we have seen too many international competitions fall victim to political manipulation, where medals are distributed to particular countries. Many excellent Taiwan athletes have been sacrificed in the process," said head coach Liou Ching-wen (劉慶文).

"Unless you kick your opponent down so that he is actually lying on the ground, the judges always have room to inject bias. Sometimes the entire audience can see that you kicked your opponent, but the judges pretend not to have noticed. This is a fact of life in taekwondo," Liou said.

Liou said confidently that Taiwan's athletes will not allow subjectivity or unfairness on the part of judges to affect them; instead, they have already braced themselves to be on the offensive every second of their bouts.

In the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games in Australia, Taiwan hoped that its taekwondo fighters would end the gold medal drought. That year, 18-year-old female fighter Chi Shu-ju (紀淑如) was riding high, defeating a South Korean opponent in a preliminary round. She proceeded to the semifinals, where she met an opponent from the host nation, Australia. Several of Chi's strikes were apparently not seen by the judges, and she was jud-ged to have been defeated by the Australian.

"Australia was then controversially awarded its first taekwondo gold medal," Liou said.

Liou refused to be drawn on which nation was behind the alleged "cheating," but he did not deny that some people point the finger at South Korea.

Apart from challengers from Iran and Egypt, Chu's main opponent, perhaps unfortunately, is Greek ace Michalis Mouroutsos. This raised the coach's fear that Taiwan's athletes may once again be "sacrificed" to honor the host nation.

Four years ago at the Sydney Olympics, Mouroutsos was a dark horse who came from behind to defeat the gold favorite, Taiwan's Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄).

Taiwan's delegation also claimed it has intelligence that Greece, Egypt and France are to be named as the gold, silver and bronze medal winners in the Under-59kg category.

To enhance the athletes' mental strength, however, the National Taekwondo Association has brought in seven specialists with PhDs in physical education to assist.

"I firmly believe that Taiwan can end its gold medal drought in taekwondo and not let the people down," said Wang Su-jun (王素筠), newly-elected head of the association.
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