Local runner Chiang Chieh-wen won the New Taipei City Wan Jin Shi Marathon yesterday, finishing first in the men’s overall and domestic categories.
Chiang completed the 42.195km race in 2 hours, 26 minutes and 29 seconds, finishing first in a field of about 8,000 competitors.
International participants are typically elite professional runners who tend to win the top prizes, so the title of domestic champion is conferred on the local runner who finishes first out of the local participants.
As no international runners participated this year, due to complications with the COVID-19 protocols, Chiang was crowned the champion of the men’s overall and domestic categories.
The New Taipei City Government had invited 12 international athletes — including from Ethiopia, Belarus and Kenya — with special permission from the Central Epidemic Command Center. However, 11 of the runners were quarantined on Saturday because they had trained with the 12th member of the group, who hospitalized for treatment after testing positive for COVID-19 earlier that day.
After their arrival late last month, the 12 athletes quarantined and received two COVID-19 tests, all of which returned negative, but on a third test before race day, one of the Kenyan athletes tested positive.
Chiang was awarded US$30,000 as the overall male marathon champion and NT$150,000 as the domestic men’s champion, the organizers said.
Female runner Tsai Yun-hsuan also won a double prize, taking home the same amount of winnings as Chiang, after becoming the overall female marathon champion and the domestic women’s champion.
Tsai completed the full marathon in 2 hours, 58 minutes and 57 seconds.
This was the first Wan Jin Shi Marathon to be held since 2019, after last year’s race was canceled due to the COVID- 19 pandemic.
Taiwanese table tennis ace Lin Yun-ju on Wednesday handily downed Sweden’s Jon Persson 4-0 to advance to the round-of-32 at the World Table Tennis Championships Finals in Houston, Texas. World No. 6 Lin, who had a bye to automatically advance to the second round, defeated the 35-year-old Swede 11-5, 11-7, 11-8, 11-7 at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Lin was yesterday to play South Korea’s Lim Jong-hoon. Compatriot and fellow Olympic veteran Chuang Chih-yuan crashed out after losing to Sweden’s Truls Moregard. Moregard, who is more than half Chuang’s age at 19, downed the 40-year-old world No. 25 4-3 in a
FEARS TOO GREAT: Denmark’s Union of Journalists urged reporters not to travel to Qatar to cover the World Cup, saying the country cannot be trusted after the incident Security forces in Qatar detained two Norwegian Broadcasting Corp (NRK) journalists for more than 30 hours and deleted footage they gathered at a migrant labor camp as they tried to report on worker issues ahead of next year’s FIFA World Cup, authorities said on Wednesday. The Qatari government accused NRK journalists Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani of “trespassing on private property and filming without a permit,” as the two returned on Wednesday to Norway following their arrest. The journalists contended they had verbal permission from those they filmed there. The arrests sparked a diplomatic dispute between Norway and Qatar. Norwegian news agency
Former champion Shaun Murphy on Wednesday said that amateurs should not be allowed to play in professional snooker tournaments after he lost in the first round of the UK championship to 19-year-old Si Jiahui. The 39-year-old Murphy, who was runner-up in the world championship this year, fought back from 5-1 down to level the match, but lost the deciding frame to the Chinese amateur. Murphy, who has won more than ￡4 million (US$5.33 million) in prize money in his career, vented his frustration after the defeat in York on Tuesday. “I’m going to sound like a grumpy old man, but that young man
The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar has for years employed a former CIA officer to help spy on soccer officials as part of a no-expense-spared effort to win and hold on to next year’s FIFA World Cup tournament, an investigation has found. The investigation found that Qatar sought an edge in securing hosting rights by hiring Kevin Chalker, a former CIA officer who became a private intelligence contractor, to spy on rival bid teams, as well as key soccer officials tasked with picking the winner in 2010. The investigation is based on interviews with Chalker’s former associates, as well as contracts, invoices,
RSS