The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) cited woodball inventor Weng Ming-hui (翁明輝) yesterday for promoting sports exchanges and increasing Taiwan's visibility in the world by means of the sport.
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Tzu-pao (
Yang lauded Weng for not only having invented woodball in 1990, but also for promoting it over the past 17 years to make it an internationally known sport.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Yang said the Olympic Council of Asia has decided to include woodball as an official competition in the First Asian Beach Games scheduled for Oct. 18 to 26 next year in Bali, Indonesia.
He said Weng has become a source of pride for Taiwan and has helped promote the nation's "sports diplomacy."
Weng said he has been promoting woodball around the world in a spirit similar to Taiwan's agricultural technology missions extending assistance to developing nations.
Weng said that thanks to modern communications technology, woodball would continue to make strides abroad over the next few years.
Woodball was invented in 1990 by Weng and Kuang-chu Young.
They tried to create a ball game in which the ball would stay on the ground while in play and that is neither expensive nor requires a large playing space so that they could invite friends to enjoy the game on their lawn.
Woodball, which looks like a cross between golf and croquet, consists of playing a ball from a starting area through a series of gates by a stroke or successive strokes. The competitor who plays the stipulated round or rounds in the fewest strokes is the winner. It is a portable lawn game with players using the same mallet for teeing off, fairway play and putting.
A woodball is larger and heavier than a golf ball. As a result, a woodball only rolls on the grass so the sport can be played in a yard or other small areas as well as on beaches.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
NUMBERS IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
Temperatures are forecast to drop steadily as a continental cold air mass moves across Taiwan, with some areas also likely to see heavy rainfall, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. From today through early tomorrow, a cold air mass would keep temperatures low across central and northern Taiwan, and the eastern half of Taiwan proper, with isolated brief showers forecast along Keelung’s north coast, Taipei and New Taipei City’s mountainous areas and eastern Taiwan, it said. Lows of 11°C to 15°C are forecast in central and northern Taiwan, Yilan County, and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, and 14°C to 17°C
STEERING FAILURE: The first boat of its class is experiencing teething issues as it readies for acceptance by the navy, according to a recent story about rudder failure The Hai Kun (海鯤), the nation’s first locally built submarine, allegedly suffered a total failure of stern hydraulic systems during the second round of sea acceptance trials on June 26, and sailors were forced to manually operate the X-rudder to turn the submarine and return to port, news Web site Mirror Daily reported yesterday. The report said that tugboats following the Hai Kun assisted the submarine in avoiding collisions with other ships due to the X-rudder malfunctioning. At the time of the report, the submarine had completed its trials and was scheduled to begin diving and surfacing tests in shallow areas. The X-rudder,
RSS