Taiwanese cup stackers took home two golds, seven silvers and five bronzes from the World Sport Stacking Championships in Orlando, Florida, which brought together nearly 300 stackers from 16 nations at the weekend.
Sport stacking, which is also known as speed stacking, is played by either an individual or a team of players who stack specifically designed plastic cups in a pre-determined sequence as fast as possible.
The three most common sequences for speed stacking contests include the “3-3-3 stack,” where nine cups are split into three stacks of three cups each; the “3-6-3 stack,” where 12 cups are stacked in three stacks made up of three cups on the left, six cups in the center and three cups on the right; and the “cycle stack,” where stackers use 12 cups to complete a sequence of stacks including a 3-6-3 stack, a 6-6 stack, a 1-10-1 stack and a down-stacked 3-6-3.
Breaking her own national record of 2.15 seconds in the 3-3-3 stack, Lin Meng-hsin (林孟欣), a student at Song Shan High School of Commerce and Home Economics, earned the top honor in the 15-16 year-old female competition after completing a 3-3-3 stack in just 1.915 seconds.
“I really did it,” Lin was heard shouting afterward.
“My hands are still trembling ... I never thought that I could achieve such an excellent result. Many people’s jaws must have dropped,” Lin, who was suffering from tendonitis in her arms caused by intensive practice, said in a post-game interview.
Lin, who also took second place in her age group for the 3-6-3 stack with a time of 2.598 seconds, said she would take part in this year’s AAU Junior Olympic Games Sport Stacking Championships in July in Detroit, Michigan.
Meanwhile, Wu Yi-fan (吳亦凡), a student at Taipei Municipal Xingya Junior-High School, joined forces with stackers from Japan, Israel and Switzerland in the Head-to-Head 3-6-3 relays in the 18-and-under age group, and emerged with a gold medal in the event.
Wu Yi-hsuan (吳宜璇), a student at Hsinchu’s Jian Gong Primary School, broke the record for the number of medals won by a Taiwanese at the championship by taking home a medal from each of the seven events in which she competed.
The Taiwan Dragon team, comprising five stackers — Wu Yi-hsuan, Tsou Luan-yi (鄒鑾佾), Yu Chun-hao (游鈞皓), Cheng Cheng-you (鄭丞佑) and Yan Ching-hsuan (顏靖軒) — earned second place in the Timed 3-6-3 Relay in the 12-and-under category.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
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