The World Games boules competition got underway in a humid 228 Memorial Park yesterday with a number of Taiwanese athletes in action.
In the first matches of the day, Taiwan’s men’s duo Chen Hung-wen and Sun Chia-yi got off to a good start against their French opponents and took a 5-0 lead, only to lose 10-7.
Later on, Chen and Sun lost 13-0 to Thailand, before finishing off the day with a 13-6 victory over Israel.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Meanwhile, in their women’s doubles opening fixture Chen Szu-an and Yang Tai-hua were on the end of a 13-1 drubbing by a Thai pairing. Chen and Yang later lost 13-3 to France and also 13-2 to Spain, before drawing 12-12 with Canada in their final match.
In the raffa, men’s pairing Chen Hung-ting and Huang Wei-hsiang went down 15-5 to Argentina, while women’s duo Chung Yu-chun and Yang Ya-ting lost by the same score to a Turkish pair.
On the first day of 10-pin bowling at the Happy Bowling Center, Taiwanese mixed doubles pair Fang Chin-nan and Wang Yu-ling failed to make the grade, finishing a disappointing 11th in their qualifying round.
PHOTO: SAM YEH, AFP
Meanwhile, in the frisbee at the Main Stadium, Taiwan continued their poor form, losing 13-4 to the US and 13-7 to Canada.
In gymnastics, acrobatics and trampoline competitions at the Kaohsiung Arena, Taiwanese athletes failed to make any of the finals.
Down by the sea at Siziwan, Taiwan’s men finished fifth in the beach handball after defeating Pakistan 24-17, 22-11, while the women secured fifth place after beating Ukraine 10-6 in a penalty shootout. Italy took the women’s gold.
PHOTO: HUANG CHIH-YUAN, TAIPEI TIMES
In related news, a Brazilian competitor got into trouble with police after taking off her top to catch some sun on the Siziwan sand. The rare site of a topless female attracted a lot of attention, according to reports, but the Brazilian beauty was quickly reminded of local customs and made to put her clothes back on by officers at the scene ... after they had also gotten an eyeful, of course.
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