Taiwanese Olympic taekwondo medalist Lo Chia-ling said she wanted nothing more than to dig into a big meal after winning a silver medal on Saturday at the Belgian Open, the last leg of her three-country, month-long overseas journey.
After finishing the G1-level Dutch Open with a bronze on March 11, the 21-year-old Lo continued to shine at the tournament in Lommel.
Coming into the event as the fourth seed, Lo kicked her way to the final on a run of four straight wins, including upsetting Turkish top-seeded Hatice Kubra Ilgun in the semi-finals, before she lost to Luana Marton of Hungary in the final.
Photo: CNA
“I think I was not in a good condition overall today. There were many moves I could have done, but didn’t, so it was a shame,” Lo said after the match, adding that her mindset was to blame rather than a lack of energy.
Finally able to return to Taiwan, she said she looks forward to eating a big meal.
The tournament was tough for Lo, who had not fully recovered from illness and was struggling to stay in her weight class while adjusting to new rules, her coach Liu Tsung-ta said.
Photo: CNA
In June last year, World Taekwondo changed its regulations to allow pushing, and Lo, who is 1.83m tall, had a hard time adjusting, Liu said.
The new rule means she has had to build muscle to deal with more body contact, but that also makes it easier to put on weight while seeking to stay at or below 57kg to remain in the same category.
Being forced to compete in a different weight category would involve sacrificing the points she has accumulated and starting from scratch, Liu said.
He added that it would be hard for Lo to control her weight over 10 tournaments in the second half of the year.
Lo, who won a bronze medal in the under-57kg class at the Tokyo Olympics, was disqualified from the US Open Taekwondo Championships earlier this month for failing to meet weight requirement by 100 grams, even after cutting her hair in a last-ditch effort to qualify.
In a March 5 Facebook post, Lo apologized to her coach and the team, writing that she would “always remember the lesson of this 0.1kg.”
Teammates Chuang Hsin-hsuan and Liang Hsing-cheng competed in the women’s under-62kg and men’s under-63kg respectively in Belgium, but were both knocked out in their first rounds.
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