Taiwan's Winter Games athletes were expecting a low-key reception when they touched down at Chiang Kai-shek Airport this morning.
The country's Olympic campaign had been plagued by internal feuding and cash rows.
PHOTO COURTESY TEAM TAIWAN
With last-place finishes in the luge and bobsled events, a question mark has now been placed over the country's future participation at the Winter Olympics.
Taiwan's luge and bobsled teams and officials can expect an inquiry within the next week about its relative failure at the Salt Lake City, Utah, Games.
The National Council of Physical Fitness and Sports is determined to review "the whole issue of Taiwan's participation at the Winter Games," a government insider said.
Tough questions are expected to be asked about the role of some delegation members to the Olympics and the things they have said.
There may also be an inquiry as to why Taiwan had to borrow a sled from a Salt Lake City high school, rather than buy a sled in time for World Cup qualification events, ahead of the Olympics.
The investigation is likely to be a further blow for Taiwan's athletes, who appeared to be underprepared for the grueling competition they faced.
Though the nation's bobsled team did manage a 23rd-place finish in practice for the final, it crashed badly three times.
Chen Chin-san (陳金山), Taiwan's four-time Olympian was said to be at fault for at least one of the crashes and at 39, it could be that his time as the team's pilot is over.
In the final four heats of the bobsled competition, Chen was unable to keep up speed through the bobsled course and Taiwan placed 29th out of 29 finishers.
Team Taiwan spokesman Sam Huang (黃柳宗) said after the event, "Chen is slow because his lines are not as clean as they are during practice runs. In competition it gets a lot faster."
Taiwan's lugers fared even worse, placing 47 and 48 out of 48 finishers. They were a full 26 and 28 seconds off winner Armin Zoeggler's pace, after four runs.
It was mortifying to learn that the country's athletes were featured in a "worst of the best" article by Newsweek.
Speaking of Lin Chuei-pin's (林垂賓) run, the magazine said Taiwan's luger was given a perfect 10 by the crowd for his crash.
"He rammed hard into the straightaway wall, buckled sideways and flipped onto his right shoulder. We could barely see him underneath his sled," the report said.
"While thus pinned (and nearly perpendicular to the track) Lin slid all the way through a couple hundred feet of ice, at least, before finally righting himself.
"`God, they're like crash test dummies,' someone blurted out. Lin finished off his run, then pumped his fist as he ground his sled to a halt."
Lee Chia-Hsun (李佳訓) was said to have "ping-ponged through the finish" and closed-circuit cameras apparently caught Taiwan's European coach Adalbert Mayregger "watching the run on a TV at the finish line and grimacing cartoonishly at all the ugly moments."
On the other hand, it was an achievement in itself for Taiwan to compete in the Winter Games.
It's Olympians did finish their events, even if they had to put up with a lamentable lack of funding and little official help.
Most Asian countries did not enter the events and Taiwan can claim to have the second-best bobsled and luge teams in the region, after Japan.
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