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Asian Games: Taiwan wins tennis gold medals

Lee Chia-hung, right, and Yang Sheng-fa of Taiwan hug after winning the gold medal in the soft tennis doubles at the Asian Games in Doha yesterday. PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES

Taiwan has continued to prove itself a force to be reckoned with in tennis over the past two days, taking gold medals in both soft and regular divisions.

Taiwan's women's team tennis showed no signs of rust after their championship match was delayed because of rain on Thursday, beating their Indian opponents on Friday to secure the nation's first gold medal ever in the event at the Asian Games.

Hsieh Su-wei led the Taiwanese charge, beating Uberoi Shikha in the first set singles match, then pairing with Chuang Chia-jung to seal the victory in the third set doubles.

The match almost took a turn for the worse in the first set when Hsieh allowed Shikha to even the score at 5-5 in the second game after taking a 5-1 lead. But she managed to settle down and finish off the game 5-7 to win the set.

The only setback of the match came during the second set when Chan Yung-jan, who has been hampered by allergies that resulted from bandages on her arms and legs, lost in two games.

The stadium was packed with 2,000 screaming Indian fans, but Hsieh used that to motivate herself, saying"winning was the only way to make the crowd shut up."

The men's soft tennis doubles pair of Li Chia-hung and Yang Sheng-fa also took a gold medal on the last day of soft tennis competition, beating their South Korean opponents 5-3. The South Koreans were down 3-0 just 12 minutes into the match, but fought back to take three of the next four.

Yang said nerves got the better of them in the seventh when they squandered six match point opportunities and ended up losing the frame.

However, they steadied themselves to win the eighth game 4-2 and took home Taiwan's third soft tennis gold of the tournament.

Wu Yen-ni earned the only silver medal of the day in the women's 51kg taekwondo. She cruised through her quarter-final and semi-final matches against the Philippines and Vietnam, but ran into South Korea's Kwon Eun-kyung for a 2-0 loss in the championship match.

Wu said she was disappointed, but remains focused on the 2008 Olympics as her main goal.

Meanwhile, heavily favored Chu Mu-yen, who won a gold medal in the Athens Olympics, was upset in his taekwondo semifinal match 3-1 by Thailand's Tewawetchapong Nattapong, but the loss meant that he gets an automatic bronze medal.

Chu partially blamed his loss on being unable to adapt to some of the new rules, and said he would take two months to consider whether to participate in the 2008 Olympics.

Liao Chia-hsing also lost the 78kg taekwondo semifinal match to his Iranian opponent to earn an automatic bronze, giving up the only point in the final seconds of the third round to lose 0-1.

Those medals continued to push Taiwan up in the overall medal standings, from eighth to sixth place out of 45 teams.

Taiwan's Hsiao Mei-yu took silver in the women's cycling 500m time trials yesterday with a time of 36.190 seconds. However, she was up against tough competition, as China's Guo Shuang set a new games record with a time of 35.175 seconds.

In the men's 1km time trials Liao Kuo-lung missed a medal by just 1.316 seconds to finish in fourth place at 1:06.358, coming in behind South Korea's Kang Dong Jin.

In billiards, Lin Yuan-chun defeated China's Pan Xiao-ting 7-5 to advance to the finals in women's eight-ball.

The golf teams also had a solid second round yesterday after dominating the field on Friday. The men's team finished second with a combined score of 415, just two strokes behind South Korea, while the women's team placed third behind South Korea and Japan with a combined 277 after two days of play. Fifteen-year-old Pan Chen-tsung fell to second in the men's individual event after his field-leading 66 on Friday grew to a 71 yesterday, while the Taiwanese women's individual leader, Tseng Ya-ni, held third place overall with a 68.

Taiwan's only bodybuilding entrant, Hsu Chia-hao, finished in eighth place in the 90kg-and-over weight class.

The women's handball team also had a rough day, losing 44-17 to South Korea in their preliminary match.
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