Taiwan’s No. 1 player Chuang Chih-yuan (莊智淵) is to face top international players at a major table tennis event hosted by Greater Kaohsiung starting today.
Organizers of the Men’s Table Tennis Tournament in Kaohsiung, with total prize money of NT$3.13 million (US$105,000), said it is the highest-level table tennis event to be hosted in Taiwan.
Chuang is up against seven of the best international players. The most prominent name is Chuang’s nemesis, Ukraine-born world no. 6 Dimitrij Ovtcharov, who now competes for Germany.
Taiwanese audiences should remember Ovtcharov well, as he defeated Chuang in the table tennis semi-final at the 2012 Olympic Games, and dashed the nation’s hopes of securing an Olympic medal for the first time in men’s singles.
World No. 9 Chuang did Taiwan proud last year when he and partner Chen Chien-an won the men’s doubles world title in Paris, thereby claiming the nation’s first world championship title in table tennis.
The other competitors in Kaohsiung are world No. 13 Jun Mizutani from Japan, world No. 19 Joo Se-hyuk from South Korea, Adrian Crican of Romania (world No. 28) and Jiang Tianyi (world No. 31), who was born in China, but now plays for Hong Kong.
Crican is Chuang’s teammate at the German club SV Werder Bremen in the European Table Tennis Union.
Rounding out the field are former world champions Jurgen Persson of Sweden (world no. 1, 1991 to 1992) and Jean-Michel Saive of Belgium (world no. 1 in 1994 to 1995, and 1996).
“All of them are top players with good skills, so I’m facing very tough competition. My aim is to get into the semi-final, where I may face either Ovtcharov or Mizutani,” Chuang told reporters yesterday.
“I have competed against them in the past. Each one has their individual style. For example, South Korea’s Joo Se-hyuk puts powerful spins on the ball and that was tough for me. Maybe facing Saive will be easier, because at 44 he is older than me,” the 32-year-old Chuan said.
Admission to the tournament at Kaohsiung’s K-Arena is free from today through Sunday.
All games are to be televised on MOD sports network.
The event is sponsored by the Taiwan Styrene Monomer Corporation, which is based in the southern port city.
Fred Kerley is competing unaugmented against drug-fuelled athletes at this weekend’s Enhanced Games and still hopes to race in the 2028 Olympics, the suspended former 100m world champion said on Friday. Arguably the biggest name at the divisive event in Las Vegas, where doping is permitted, the US sprinter said he had chosen not to take any of the banned substances including testosterone and steroids that his competitors have been using. “I don’t need it. God gave me fast feet for a reason. And I’m here to showcase my talent,” Kerley said. Kerley last September became the first US competitor and first track
MLB is experiencing an epidemic of guys being dudes. At ballparks all across the US, groups consisting of mostly young men are joining in on the “Tarps Off” trend that is loud, goofy, infectious and new to the baseball world. Joining in on the fun is simple: Go to the section where the party is happening, take off your shirt and start twirling it above your head. Soccer-like chants or singing usually follow — injecting a jolt of energy for a sport that is occasionally chided for its lack of energy inside the stadium. After getting its start in St Louis, Missouri, on
Hull City AFC are to play Middlesbrough for a place in the Premier League after Southampton on Wednesday failed in their appeal against expulsion from the Championship playoff final for spying on opponents. Southampton were thrown out of the final on Tuesday and handed a four-point deduction for next season after they had beaten semi-final opponents Middlesbrough. “The original sanction of expulsion ... remains in place, as does the four-point deduction to be applied to the 2026/27 Championship table and the reprimand in respect of all charges,” the English Football League said in a statement. The final is to be played at Wembley
INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL: Officials, players and fans winging across all of North America are likely to make this the most polluting World Cup ever, say scientists The largest and likely most lucrative ever World Cup this summer could set a record for the most-polluting sporting event in history, environmental experts say. “Unlike the case of the Olympic Games, where the carbon footprints have been reducing over the last several editions, this is totally opposite in the case of FIFA men’s World Cup,” said David Gogishvili, a geographer at the University of Lausanne (Unil). The summer’s World Cup has been expanded to 48 teams for the first time. It is being played in three countries — Mexico, Canada and the US — for the first time. It is going to
RSS