The ladies Preliminary Round will lead off the 2011 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships at noon today at the Taipei Arena to jumpstart the four-day competition that features some of the best and brightest figure skating stars in the world.
More than 30 contestants are expected to take to the ice in this segment, with the showdown between Japan’s Miki Ando and Mao Asada taking center stage as Ando looks to outdo her compatriot for the second straight time in the 2010-2011 season following her narrow triumph in December’s All-Japan Figure Skating Championships in Nagano, Japan.
REVENGE
The scale could tip slightly in favor of Asada as the silver medalist at last year’s Winter Olympics seeks revenge against her fellow countrywoman in the highly anticipated battle.
Also making a serious run for the title is US standout Mirai Nagasu, who finished fourth overall in last year’s Winter Olympics and cannot wait to take the ice this afternoon.
ICE DANCE
Following the Preliminary Round will be the Short Dance segment in the Ice Dance Short Dance Category, scheduled to start at 4pm where Canadian duo Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, gold medalists in last year’s Winter Olympics, will take on their US counterparts and last year’s Winter Olympics runners-up Meryl Davis and Charlie White.
The opening ceremony will promptly follow the Short Dance segment at 6:45pm before the Pairs Short Program wraps up Day 1.
“It will be an exciting day for the local fans as they get a chance to watch some of the world’s best figure skaters up close,” the event’s news and media coordinator Peter Huang told the Taipei Times yesterday afternoon.
“This is the first time that a skating event of this magnitude is taking place in Taiwan,” Huang added.
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