Taiwanese tennis duo Lin Chia-wen (林家文) and Ho Chiu-mei (何秋美) on Thursday defended their women’s doubles title at the Summer Deaflympics in Brazil, earning Taiwan’s second gold medal at the Games.
Lin and Ho defeated Germans Heike Albrecht-Schroder and Verena Fleckenstein 6-4, 6-1 in a relatively comfortable victory.
“After waiting for five years, we are able to win a gold medal again,” Lin said after the match, while also thanking her partner for her performance.
Photo courtesy of tennis coach Cheng Wei-yang
The duo won the women’s doubles in 2017 at the Summer Deaflympics in Turkey, the most recent previous edition of the Games.
Lin also took home gold in the women’s singles event that year.
In Brazil, she still has chances to win gold in two more events — the women’s singles and mixed doubles — with both finals scheduled for yesterday.
Ho was to vie for the bronze medal in the women’s singles against Rotem Ashkenazy of Israel.
In other events, Taiwan’s Hsu Le (許樂) advanced to the semi-finals of the women’s 200m dash with a time of 26.32 seconds in the qualifying round on Thursday. She was to race in the semi-finals and finals yesterday.
Earlier this week, Hsu won the women’s 100m hurdles to snag Taiwan’s first gold medal at this year’s Games, after she earlier won a bronze medal in the women’s 100m.
The Taiwanese delegation consists of 39 athletes, who were competing in eight sports — track and field, badminton, table tennis, tennis, men’s basketball, karate, taekwondo and shooting.
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