The secretary-general of the nation’s Olympic Committee said on Sunday that he respected an online critique of the outfits the Taiwanese athletes wore at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, on Friday.
Kevin Chen (陳國儀) said he had no comment on opinions about how the national team were dressed because “views on fashion designs vary from person to person.”
However, Chen said that the committee respected the criticism by a blogger on Yahoo Sports and would seek to improve in the future.
Photo: CNA
In the article by Greg Wyshynski titled “Best and Worst Dressed Olympic Nations in Sochi Opening Ceremony,” the writer described Taiwan’s team as being dressed like painters and decorators.
“From a distance, we assumed they had just gotten back from choir practice. These floor-length coats are neither practical nor attractive, unless of course you’re planning on doing some house painting or joining a cult for the winter,” Wyshynski wrote.
The blue uniforms were sponsored by Mizuno (Taiwan) Corp, Chen said, explaining that Taiwan had only a minimal budget for the Olympics and was not out to make a splash with the uniforms.
The committee was extremely grateful simply to have a company help sponsor the team’s presence in Sochi, Chen said.
Mizuno (Taiwan) manager Yang Fu-cheng (楊富程) said the outfits supplied by his company were imported from Japan because Taiwan does not produce the overcoat that was used. Though the overcoat was criticized for its appearance, Yang said its blue color was representative of Taiwan and it was highly functional, with a wind-resistant design able to keep athletes warm in the cold environment.
Mizuno is a Japanese sports equipment and sportswear brand.
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
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
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