Former decathlete Ku Chin-shui (古金水) died of leukemia at National Taiwan University Hospital yesterday morning.
He was 56.
Ku was best-known for representing Taiwan at the Asian Athletics Championship several times and was the decathlon silver and gold medalist in 1983 and 1985 respectively.
He was also the decathlon gold medal winner at the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing.
His best performance in the pole vault was 5.05m, which broke the national record set by Olympian Yang Chuan-kwang (楊傳廣).
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) wrote on Facebook that Ku was an extraordinary Taiwanese athlete, who dominated track and field both at home and overseas in the 1980s and 1990s. She said Ku was an ambassador for the sport.
Taiwanese athlete Chi Cheng (紀政) also posted an announcement about Ku’s death on Facebook.
She said Ku was able to hang on until yesterday because he was supported by his friends and his extraordinary will.
She said she was proud of him and he can rest from all the hardships in his life.
Born in 1960 in Hualien, Ku was an Amis Aborigine and began track-and-field training in junior-high school. He and another Taiwanese decathlete, Lee Fu-an (李福恩), jointly turned the 1980s into the golden age of track and field in Taiwan.
Ku was later accused of being involved in an explosion on a Uni Air flight in 1999.
Though he was acquitted of all charges in 2011, the lawsuit destroyed his athletic career. For a time, he was forced to take a job at a steel factory because nobody else would hire an alleged aircraft bomber.
Ku later became a coach at Taichung Municipal Chung Ming Senior High School in 2008.
He was diagnosed with leukemia at the end of 2014 and was undergoing bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy at the National Taiwan University Hospital.
Using a wheelchair, Ku participated in the New Year Walk hosted by Chi’s Hope Foundation earlier this year.
“It was painful to undergo the chemotherapy and I managed to get through the entire process with the will and determination of an athlete. I thank all of you for your support,” Ku said at the time, adding that his dream was to train more young athletes.
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
LOOKING NORTH: The base would enhance the military’s awareness of activities in the Bashi Channel, which China Coast Guard ships have been frequenting, an expert said The Philippine Navy on Thursday last week inaugurated a forward operating base in the country’s northern most province of Batanes, which at 185km from Taiwan would be strategically important in a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait. The Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted Northern Luzon Command Commander Lieutenant General Fernyl Buca as saying that the base in Mahatao would bolster the country’s northern defenses and response capabilities. The base is also a response to the “irregular presence this month of armed” of China Coast Guard vessels frequenting the Bashi Channel in the Luzon Strait just south of Taiwan, the paper reported, citing a
BETTER SERVICE QUALITY: From Nov. 10, tickets with reserved seats would only be valid for the date, train and route specified on the ticket, THSRC said Starting on Nov. 10, high-speed rail passengers with reserved seats would be required to exchange their tickets to board an earlier train. Passengers with reserved seats on a specific train are currently allowed to board earlier trains on the same day and sit in non-reserved cars, but as this is happening increasingly often, and affecting quality of travel and ticket sales, Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) announced that it would be canceling the policy on Nov. 10. It is one of several new measures launched by THSRC chairman Shih Che (史哲) to improve the quality of service, it said. The company also said
A magnitude 6 earthquake last night at 9:11pm struck off northeastern Yilan County, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The earthquake’s epicenter was located in waters between Toucheng Township (頭城) and Turtle Island (Gueishan Island, 龜山島), about 22.1km northeast of Yilan County Hall at a depth of 112km, CWA data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effects of a temblor, was highest in Yilan’s Dongshan (冬山) and Nanao (南澳) townships and Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), where it measured 4 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. It measured 3 in other areas of Yilan and Taipei, as