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 (
"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 (
"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 (
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