Taiwan had a great day on the golf course yesterday, taking top-three finishes in both the men's and women's divisions in the first round of play.
Pan Cheng-tsung set the pace in the men's individual by shooting a 66 to finish first, two strokes ahead of the second place golfers.
The complete team of Pan, Chan Shih-chang, Chiang Chen-chih and Pan Fu-chiang also did extremely well, tying for first with South Korea.
One stroke back
For the women, Tseng Ya-ni took second in the individual competition shooting one stroke off the leaders with a 67.
The three-person team of Tseng, Lu Kwan-chih and Yu Pei-lin tied for second with South Korea, shooting a team 137, two strokes behind Japan.
Taiwan's women's soccer team also avenged its defeat to Vietnam in the Asian Cup in July with a three-to-one victory in its preliminary match on Thursday.
Forward Tsai Li-chen scored the first two goals in the first half while Lee Hsueh-hua tacked on an insurance run in the second.
Although eliminated from the finals with a one-and-two record, the win marks the Taiwanese squad's first victory at the Asian Games in eight years.
Taiwan's baseball players also won themselves plenty of money in addition to national pride with their win on Thursday.
NT$3 million each
Each player will receive NT$3 million (US$92,800), meaning that the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports will have to shell out NT$70.5 million in prize money to the baseball team.
A few results were less fortunate. Yang Mao-yung became the first person to drop out of the iron man triathlon event, which is being held for the first time this year, when he was unable to continue after the swimming stage.
Two of the nation's women's soft tennis doubles teams lost their quarterfinal matches to Japanese teams, Chou Chiu-ping and Yang Hui-ju at five-to-four and Fang Yen-ling and Lan Yi-yun at five-to-zero.
The Japanese teams gave the men a hard time too, with Lin Shun-wu and Yeh Chia-lin also falling in the quarterfinals five-to-two.
However Li Chia-hung and Yang Sheng-fan broke the emerging trend by beating their Japanese opponents five-to-four in their semifinal men's match to advance to the finals.
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
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