Ma Chih-hung (
Practice earlier this week in Turin, Italy, led to a dramatic crash and a hospital visit for Czech competitor Jakub Hyman. Four racers ended up in the hospital when the track opened a year ago.
At the suggestion of coaches and athletes, the track has seen modifications on two turns at the bottom section of 1,435m track, and athletes have been warned about the dangerous "Toro" section -- a series of three right turns in the middle portion.
PHOTO: AP
Bobsled racers will be competing on the same track, though luge specialists face considerably greater risk since they have virtually no protection.
Ma grew up in rural Pingtung County -- a place where temperatures never approach freezing and few children have any experience riding sleds down mountain slopes.
Olympic competitions in the past 20 years have become more regulated, with athletes needing to qualify for Olympic competition rather than simply proving they are the best in their respective countries. Competitors need to rank within the top 30 percent in internationally sanctioned events. In luge and bobsled, there are other conditions, including performances on different tracks and participation in at least five sanctioned competitions.
PHOTO: AFP
Hsu Chi-you, president of the Amateur Chinese Taipei Luge and Bobsled Association said that local athletes need to beat out three to five different competitors from Europe and North America. A typical event may attract 100 competitors, with a top-30 finish earning one point toward qualification.
Hsu participated in the two-man bobsled event in Sarajevo in 1984. since then he has completely dedicated himself to developing local luge and bobsled talent.
Maintaining a bobsled team has become increasingly difficult, he said, since teams of two or four competitors need to take part in long-term training that is expensive.
Local luge and bobsled athletes are generally recruited from high school track and field teams, but after experiencing their first terrifying run, they usually quit.
Hsu recently developed a year-round training program based on luge and skeletons outfitted with wheels. Similar to the extreme sport of street luge, which grew out of skateboarders sitting down and "butt boarding" down large hills, this type of training has helped his group identify potential international competitors.
Ma, 19, is considered a prodigy by his European instructors, as he possesses a natural, innate ability to make it through treacherous courses.
Ma has received generous government funding to cover much of the cost of his training. He has also benefited from training and instruction by Chen Ching-shan, a four-time Olympic bobsledder who's last appearance was with Taiwan's two-man bobsled team at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Chen is a physical education instructor at Laiyi Senior High School in Pingtung where he is constantly on the lookout for bobsled, luge and skeleton talent.
Chen typically puts students through a two-to-three month training program on street luges and skeletons before selecting four or five candidates for training in Europe.
Many of the top athletes at Laiyi Senior High are from the nearby Paiwan Tribe of indigenous people, a group that is particularly known for being fearless.
"Our European coaches say its difficult to find an athlete as talented and gifted as Ma," Hsu said. "If he decides to attend college in Europe, with better access to luge and bobsled runs, he can become a great competitor."
Ma's first run takes place today at 4pm local time. He is slated to be the 26th competitor down the track.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed