With 186 athletes competing in 16 sports and a total delegation of more than 300, the Australia Taipei Summer Universiade team, or the Australian Uniroos, is the largest Australian team ever to compete in the Games.
Taipei Universiade Organizing Committee chief executive officer You Shih-ming yesterday hosted a media conference in Taipei with Australia’s Brittany O’Brien, who claimed the 10m synchronized diving silver medal, Sian Whittaker, who won gold in the 100m and 200m backstroke, Kyle Cranston, who claimed the decathlon gold and Heming Hu, who competed at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in Brazil last year.
The Universiade opening ceremony was marred by protests outside the Taipei Municipal Stadium and saw many of the 7,7000 athletes unable to participate in the parade of nations.
Photo: Deirdre Yeo
However, the athletes had little to say about the demonstrations or how it might have affected their moral.
“I wasn’t present during the protests, I heard about it, but no it didn’t have an effect on me,” Cranston said.
“I heard about the protests, but I didn’t go to the opening ceremony so I didn’t know until a day or two after, so I didn’t really impact me at all,” Hu said.
“This experience has been amazing so far. Now that the competition is over I will get to see Taipei. It’s a lot like the Olympics, this whole experience,” O’Brien said of her impression of the Games.
“I just finished competition yesterday. Overall it’s [the Games] been very good” Whittaker said.
The team did criticize athletes’ transport services.
“So having gone from Gwangju Universiade, I notice the difference in travel to the venues … but I think with everyone having to come from the village and go to the venues is very fair, but I just notice that from traveling from venues to the Athletes’ Village was more demanding on the athletes,” said Cranston, who has recorded three of his season bests results while in Taipei and two year’s ago competed in the Gwangju Summer Universiade in South Korea.
“I think the event all in all, it’s been fantastic … just the bus times I think to all the sports [venues] it was at least 30 to 40 minutes and that’s the same for everybody, but once you know the times you plan it out, it just the way it is,” said Hu, who competed for Australia in table tennis for the first time at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and finished ninth in the men’s doubles, 17th in the mixed doubles and fifth in the team event.
“Competition wise I’ve had a bit of a roller coaster ... but overall it’s been good and I like it here in Taiwan,” Hu added.
Whittaker, who on Monday pulled ahead of Canada’s Alexia Zevnik in the women’s 200m backstroke to claim gold in two minutes, 9.5 seconds, said she was unaware that the National Taiwan Sport University Arena pool she competed in was a former basketball arena.
“We didn’t know the pool was temporary until we had swum in a couple of times and someone actually told us that it was a basketball arena,” she said. “You can’t really see the difference between a temporary pool and a pool that had already been built there. So overall the pool was really great we all had some pretty good races in there so we didn’t really notice it was temporary.”
Local athletes on Friday said they had been little affected by high temperatures of about 37°C.
Cranston was also little deterred by the change in climate from Sydney’s winter to Taipei’s summer.
“Coming from Sydney into this weather, its quiet hot and I compete from 9am to 10pm, so it’s hard to adjust to the temperature, but you hydrate and do ice baths and stay out of the sun,” he said. “Its quite hard to manage your performances in this heat, but I have managed it well and came away with the gold medal.”
Hu, who lives in Melbourne, said his was one of the lucky sports because the venues are air-conditioned.
“I knew for a long time I was coming to Taipei and that’s going to be pretty hot, but with indoor events I knew that it would be air-conditioned, so it’s one of the lucky sports,” Hu said. “But like Kyle said, do the ice baths and hydrate. I did well so I didn’t have much of a problem with it.”
O’Brien, Whittaker, Cranston and Hu have competed in their finals and now have time to explore Taipei.
“We went to Taipei 101 and that was really beautiful to see the view and we will go to a night market,” said O’Brien, who is aiming to qualify for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in Australia next year.
“So far it’s been really good, it’s a really gorgeous city,” Whittaker said.
On Day 8 of competition, the Uniroos have claimed three gold, one silver and one bronze, but are not listed top 10 medal tally. Japan is in the lead with 29 gold medals.
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