As the closing ceremony yesterday wrapped up this year’s Asian Games, sports officials and fans found the event a reason to celebrate, because Taiwanese athletes won 17 gold, 19 silver and 31 bronze medals, a total of 67.
Their achievements should be lauded by the whole nation, sports agencies and government officials are saying. It was the nation’s second-best showing at the event, only surpassed by the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok, Thailand.
The Sports Administration has announced that a total of NT$358.8 million (US$11.68 million) in prize money will be handed out to the winning athletes.
Photo: Reuters
However, some critics are saying that, apart from praiseworthy results in several events, the nation’s athletes failed to deliver at critical moments in the major team competitions, finishing third in men’s baseball, behind Japan and South Korea, and arriving home without a medal in soccer or basketball.
Some also question giving out such considerable sums to elite athletes for a podium finish, saying that the money would be better spent on community sports development and better basic facilities for young people interested in taking up sports.
Netizen “jenny kam” said that “the NT$350 million will come out of the taxpayers’ pockets, but they weren’t consulted first.”
Other netizens said the money would be better spent on health, education and school lunch programs in less well-off regions of the nation, or on road construction and other basic infrastructure projects in local communities.
Netizen “Pilli Q” said the money only goes to glorify “Chinese Taipei,” but that he would have been happier if the nation was represented by athletes calling themselves “Taiwan.”
The government and the sports agency have the wrong approach, sports critics said. The athletes at international competitions are fighting for individual honor, but lack quality facilities, good coaching and enough funding to pay for travel to major tournaments, they said.
One critic pointed out how soccer is the world’s most popular and most watched sport, but the women’s side, while making a good run for gold, were outclassed by South Korea 4-0 in the semi-final.
The critic added that the men’s team were further outclassed. Even among the “minnows” of Asia, they could not secure a single goal in four games. They did not even advance out of group play. Even after a 0-0 draw against Palestine, they could not manage to win against Indonesia or Hong Kong, even losing to underdog Laos 2-0.
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