Taiwan won their fifth gold medal at the East Asian Games in Tianjin, China, yesterday as Lee Wen-jung scored 19.33 points to win the Taolu women’s Jianshu and Qiangshu all-round competition.
In taekwondo, Taiwan’s Lin Wan-ting lost in the final to South Korea’s Lee Seo-hee in the women’s under-46kg category, while fellow Taiwanese Chien Yi-hsin also lost to a South Korean, Kim Dong-yoon, in the final of the men’s under-87kg category.
Earlier yesterday, Chang Ming-huang won a bronze medal for Taiwan in the men’s shot put final with a throw of 19.19m.
Photo: AFP
Chang said he was under heavy pressure to break the the East Asian Games record and he did not perform as well as he might have.
Wang Guangfu, China’s National Games men’s shot put champion with a 20.12m personal best, won the gold with a throw of only 19.34m, while the silver went to Wang Like, also of China, with 19.21m.
China were leading the medals table with 44 golds at press time, compared with 11 apiece for nearest challengers Japan and South Korea.
Photo: AFP
Taiwan had five golds, five silvers and 10 bronze medals in fourth placee.
BASEBALL
By Paul Huang
Photo: Courtesy of the CTBA
Contributing reporter
Previously unbeaten Taiwan shocked the Asian baseball world by blanking Japan 11-0 in seven innings to extend their winning streak to three straight games in the East Asian Games preliminaries at the Tianjin Sports Center yesterday afternoon.
What should have been an evenly matched contest was all-Taiwan as the Taiwanese embarrassed their neighbors with a three-run first inning and upped their surprising lead to five by the end of the second, before blowing the game wide open with a six-run fourth to put the game away long before the final out.
“I wasn’t expecting [the game] to turn out this way,” a pleasantly surprised Taiwan skipper Lu Ming-tsu said after the game.
His troops have lost more often than not against Japan in international competitions in recent years, making the landslide triumph that much more special.
Leading the way for Taiwan with an impeccable performance was starter Wang Yao-lin, who overcame a shaky first that saw Japan place two on base with no outs by calmly retiring the next three batters in order to prevent the opposition from scoring.
That was the as close to plating a run Japan got against Wang, who scattered only two more hits and fanned six through the sixth in one of the most dominating performances by a Taiwanese pitcher against Japan.
“I’m glad I was able to help our team win because losing [to Japan] for a third time would not look too good,” Wang said after the game, referring to dropping two in a row in his two previous outings against Japan.
Offensively for Taiwan, only one player from the starting nine did not have a hit, while four had multi-hit games.
Next up for Taiwan are Mongolia. The opening pitch is scheduled for 1pm today, with Wang Tsung-hao expected to get the nod.
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