Team Taiwan will have at least two medals at the Paris Paralympics, as its female table tennis duo yesterday advanced to the WD20 class final, after the team won a bronze medal in taekwondo earlier this week.
Lin Tzu-yu and Tian Shiau-wen triumphed against Poland’s Natalia Partyka and Karolina Pek 3-0 in a 23-minute semi-final game. They won three sets 11-7, 11-6, 11-4.
The Taiwanese duo on Friday breezed past the Turkish pair of Merve Demir and Neslihan Kavas in the quarter-finals with a 3-0 sweep, taking down the latter 11-7, 11-6, 11-8 in 21 minutes to reach the semi-finals.
Photo: CNA
They will have at least a silver.
Along with the bronze won by Taiwanese taekwondo athlete Xiao Xiang-wen in the men’s 58kg division on Thursday, Team Taiwan has surpassed its medal haul in the last edition of the Paralympics in Tokyo, where it secured only one bronze in women’s singles class 10 from Tian.
Tian and Lin, an Asian Para Games champion in women’s singles class 10 last year, entered the event as the top seeds and received a bye in the first round.
However, the two revealed that they had been under intense pressure before Friday’s match.
“The first match is always tougher for us,” said Tian, who thought the uncertainty of the atmosphere and their condition made it hard for them to relax.
Lin shared the same sentiment and said that she felt her body was a bit stiff, but said their frequent communication helped them adjust during the match.
Their coach, Wang Ming-yueh, said that the team did a great job in analyzing and executed their planned tactics well.
After press time last night, the two were to play against Australia’s Lei Li-na and Yang Qian in the final.
Additional reporting by Oguz Solak
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