Three North Korean basketball players were part of a unified Korean women’s basketball team that on Wednesday defeated Indonesia 108-40 at the Asian Games.
South Korean player Park Hye-jin said center Ro Suk-yong, guard Jang Mi-gyong and guard Kim Hye-yon joined nine others from the South to form the unified team last month.
“The joint training period that we have to go through ahead the Games was very short and this is certainly a particular challenge for us, but that was not an obstacle, because we are all very happy with this unification,” Park said.
Photo: AFP
“There is no significant difficulties among us so far, because in fact we are from the same nation and culture. We have no difficulty communicating, because our language is same,” she said.
Ro scored 22 points, while Kim added 14 against hosts Indonesia at the 2,500-seat basketball hall at the Bung Karno Sports Arena.
The North Korean players immediately went to the changing room after the game.
The arena was half full for the game, with about 100 South Korean fans wearing white T-shirts and hats, some beating traditional drums and others waving flags.
Basketball is one of three sports in which the Koreas are fielding joint squads at the Asian Games, along with rowing and canoeing.
South Korea are the defending Asian Games champions in women’s basketball.
“Our target for now is to win a gold medal. We don’t think about our target after this, we are currently focusing on the Asian Games,” Park said. “We do hope that the unified Korea team can continue, not only in basketball, but also in other sports, and this will lead to unification in other fields.”
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