German runner Thomas Dold yesterday won the 2008 Taipei 101 Run Up — an annual event that attracts world-class runners and jogging enthusiasts — and claimed the grand prize of NT$200,000.
More than 2,500 competitors, including professional runners, corporate teams and individuals, joined the challenge to climb 2,046 steps — 390m up 91 floors — in the fourth Taipei 101 Run Up to compete for cash prizes totaling NT$1 million. Dold, who also took part in last year’s competition, defeated the defending champion Italian Marco De Gasperi to win the title in the Men’s Elite Group with a time of 10 minutes 53 seconds. Taiwan’s Chen Fu-tsai (陳福財) came in third.
In the women’s event, Lee Hsiao-yu (李筱瑜), of Taiwan, won in 14 minutes and 53 seconds. Chien Pei-yu came second with 16 minutes and 14 seconds while Italian Cristina Bonacina finished third.
PHOTO: AFP
Other than professional runners, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Stephen Young and Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) also participated in the race.
Young and his wife, Barbara Finamore, who took part in the race for the third consecutive year, said that they enjoyed it.
“My wife and I are planning to climb Yushan [玉山] this summer so this is a good practice for us,” Young said.
Yushan is the tallest peak in Taiwan, towering 3,952m above sea level.
Young said after the race that he was a bit more tired than last year, as he had just come back from the US and was still jet lagged.
“But I feel that this year it was not that hot as before in the staircase and I will definitely join the race again next year,” he said.
Taipei 101 Manager Harace Lin (林鴻明) said the race is not only a health event, but also meaningful.
“This year we will donate all registration fees, less the insurance premium, to charity groups helping disadvantaged children living in remote areas,” he said.
The Taipei 101 Run Up was held for the first time in November 2005 not only as a stair climbing competition in the world’s tallest building, but also as a way to encourage Taiwanese to exercise.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater