Taiwan’s men and women made a strong start in their campaign for Tchoukball gold in Kaohsiung yesterday, with both teams earning big victories.
In the crunch second game of the day against reigning world champions and No. 1 seeds Switzerland, Taiwan were in imperious form, making a very good Swiss team look very ordinary.
The Swiss had no answer to Taiwan’s ruthless, high-energy play and acrobatic shooting and catching around the trampoline, as the home side ended the first of three periods 27-15 ahead.
Taiwan’s tactic of switching ends quickly caught the Swiss out and by the end of the second period their lead was 51-31.
The third period was a little slower paced, but Taiwan still outscored the Swiss 25-19 to wrap up a 76-50 victory that left them in pole position for a place in the final following their 71-36 victory against Singapore in game one.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s ladies thrashed Great Britain 65-29 in their opener. Faster switching — the key to scoring in Tchoukball — saw Taiwan build up an early lead.
They then built steadily on that lead as superior shooting skills and a succession of unforced errors by Great Britain saw them hold a 21-9 lead by the end of the first period.
More slick play and British errors extended that lead to 43-21 after the second period, before they wrapped up the win, outscoring the Brits 22-8 in the final period.
In their second match against a strong Switzerland team the women won 48-38 while in the last game of the day the men thrashed Canada 62-29.
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