Stories of sacrifice abound among Olympians, but Taiwanese luger Lien Te-an has quite literally taken the hard road to get to the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
With little snow in his steamy homeland and no proper luge tracks to speak of, Lien speeds down mountain highways in Yilan County on a wheeled sled when not training on the ice abroad.
Reaching speeds of 105kph, it can be a white-knuckle ride for Lien, but also quite startling for car and truck drivers when the 23-year-old whizzes past them while lying supine on his sled.
“We take off the steels [blades] and put on the wheels and we can train everywhere in Taiwan,” he told reporters yesterday at the Pyeongchang Athletes’ Village.
“The cars will often stop to take a look at what’s going on. When we’re training, we organize people to do some traffic management to make it safer. There will be people along the road up and down the mountains using walkie-talkies,” he said.
Competing in his second Olympics, Lien is to carry Taiwan’s flag at tomorrow’s opening ceremony, leading a tiny delegation of four athletes, three of them speed skaters.
Few of his compatriots back home had much clue about luge, or many of the other winter sports, Lien said, but he is determined to raise their profile while improving on his 39th placing at the Sochi Games in Russia.
“This time I got more experience because in 2014, in Sochi, it was my first time in the Olympic Games and I was so really nervous,” Lien said. “But this time I spent four years to get more confidence, to get more experience and also courage.”
His heart swelled with pride yesterday during Taiwan’s welcoming ceremony at the Athletes’ Village, but overnight he was frantically calling his mother in the wake of an earthquake that struck near her hometown in Hualien County late on Tuesday.
“When it happened I quickly gave my mum a call and everything is okay with her, but I was really nervous,” he said.
Taiwanese parents can be quite protective of their children and naturally wary about them taking up extreme sports, but Lien has had the full support of his parents.
He puts it down to his heritage as an Atayal.
Before modern times, Atayal were fierce warriors who would award their men facial tattoos when they claimed the head of an enemy.
“My family’s pretty open-minded about things... We are quite a different culture,” said Lien, who is a student at a sports university on the outskirts of Taipei.
“It is fair to say that we are a carefree people and we are not scared of anything. We have more courage and we want to try everything. We believe that we can do anything,” he said.
Bringing home a medal rather than a head from Pyeongchang would surely be worthy of an honorary tattoo, but Lien just hopes to crack the top 10 and inspire a few more Taiwanese to strive for a Winter Games.
The opening runs of the men’s singles in the luge event start on Saturday at the Olympic Sliding Centre.
“It will be a bit tough for him to get a medal, but I think if he just gets a personal best here and finishes the best luger from Asia, I do not think that will be too hard for him,” Lien’s coach Chin Hao-ching said.
“He is already an inspiration,” Cina added.
By the time Cameron Menzies finally left the arena on Monday, the blood gushing from the gash on his right hand had trickled down his wrist, part of his forearm and — somehow — up to his face. Smeared in crimson and regret, and already mouthing sheepish apologies to the crowd, he disappeared down the steps, pursued by a stern-looking Matt Porter, the chief executive of Professional Darts Corp (PDC). The physical scars from Menzies’ encounter with the Alexandra Palace drinks table after his 3-2 defeat against Charlie Manby at the Darts World Championship would be gone within a few weeks.
Manchester United on Monday blew the lead three times to miss out on moving up to fifth in the Premier League as AFC Bournemouth would not be beaten in a thrilling 4-4 draw at Old Trafford. United have lost just once in their past 10 games, but Ruben Amorim would be frustrated as more points at home were frittered away despite arguably the best attacking display of his reign in charge. Amad Diallo and Casemiro gave the hosts a halftime lead either side of Antoine Semenyo’s equalizer. Two Bournemouth goals from Evanilson and Marcus Tavernier in seven minutes at the start of the
LOW-GOAL SHOOT-OUT: Of the nine penalties in the shoot-out, only three went in, with Flamengo’s Samuel Lino, and Vitinha and Nuno Mendes of PSG netting Matvei Safonov on Wednesday made four straight penalty saves in a penalty shoot-out to help Paris Saint-Germain beat Flamengo in the Intercontinental Cup final and win a sixth trophy of the year. The Russian goalkeeper was thrown in the air by his teammates after his exploits in the shoot-out, which was won 2-1 by PSG after a 1-1 draw after extra-time. It completed a trophy-laden 12 months for the French team, who had already won the Trophee des Champions, Ligue 1, the Coupe de France, the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Super Cup — also on penalties against Tottenham Hotspur in
Italian Luca de Aliprandini described Saturday’s World Cup giant slalom at Val d’Isere as the hardest race of his life, coming two days after his Swiss partner Michelle Gisin suffered a heavy fall in training which required neck surgery. De Aliprandini finished 26th in the men’s event won by Loic Meillard, but the result paled into insignificance with two-time Olympic ski champion Gisin in hospital with injuries to her wrist, knee and cervical spine (neck). “It was Michelle’s wish that I race here. I couldn’t say no to her, but it was the toughest race of my entire life,” an emotional De
RSS