Badminton in Taiwan has almost doubled in popularity over the past decade, the Ministry of Sports said yesterday, attributing the growth to the overseas success of Taiwanese players.
Among people participating in ball-related sports, 9.4 percent play badminton, up 4.2 percentage points from the 5.2 percent reported in 2016, a survey conducted by the ministry found.
That growth appears significant compared with the 0.4 percentage point increase in public participation in ball-related sports since 2016, the ministry said.
Photo: Liu Yu-ching, Taipei Times
Interest in the sport was likely boosted by the success of Taiwanese shuttlers in international competitions, including Taiwan’s gold in the men's doubles at last year’s Paris Olympics and in the women's singles at the 2023 Badminton Asia Championships, it said.
Lee Yang (李洋), who has hung up his racket and is now minister of sport, paired up with Wang Chi-ling (王齊麟) to win back-to-back Olympic men's doubles gold medals in 2021 and last year, while Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎), widely regarded as an all-time great, dominated the women's world rankings for a record 214 weeks, before officially declaring her retirement early last month.
Tai is the major reason behind the sport's increased popularity — one that even outpaces the country's notoriously low birth rate, said Lai Chin-ting (賴勁廷), a badminton coach at New Taipei City's Lu Jiang Elementary School.
Referring to a nationwide elementary school competition that ended last week, Lai said that such an event — consisting of individual and team categories — used to conclude within a week about 15 years ago.
“It took two weeks to finish all of them this year,” Lai said.
Records on the competition’s official Web site show that the event ran for eight days in 2015, compared with 13 days this year, with the total number of individuals, doubles and mixed teams growing from 415, 188 and 108 to 993, 391 and 229, respectively, over the same period.
Of the respondents to the ministry’s survey on Taiwanese nationals' exercise habits, 35.6 percent said that they engage in regular exercise, meaning at least three times a week, for at least 30 minutes at a time, at an intensity that causes a person to sweat and breathe heavily.
The number increased for a fifth consecutive year and was the highest reported since 2016, but the 0.3 percentage point hike was still within the 0.6 percentage point margin of error, the ministry said.
The survey, which involved 25,472 samples, was conducted from June to August, and targeted respondents aged 13 or older via telephone, the ministry said.
LOW-GOAL SHOOT-OUT: Of the nine penalties in the shoot-out, only three went in, with Flamengo’s Samuel Lino, and Vitinha and Nuno Mendes of PSG netting Matvei Safonov on Wednesday made four straight penalty saves in a penalty shoot-out to help Paris Saint-Germain beat Flamengo in the Intercontinental Cup final and win a sixth trophy of the year. The Russian goalkeeper was thrown in the air by his teammates after his exploits in the shoot-out, which was won 2-1 by PSG after a 1-1 draw after extra-time. It completed a trophy-laden 12 months for the French team, who had already won the Trophee des Champions, Ligue 1, the Coupe de France, the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Super Cup — also on penalties against Tottenham Hotspur in
LACKLUSTER FIGHT: At one stage, the referee lost patience with the two fighters, warning them in the fourth round that ‘the fans did not pay to see this crap’ Former world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua on Friday knocked out YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in their controversial Netflix-backed bout in Miami. The fight at the Kaseya Center, which saw both men reportedly splitting a mammoth purse of US$184 million, had triggered alarm across boxing due to the gulf in physical size and class between Britain’s two-time former world champion Joshua and Paul, an Internet personality who has forged a lucrative career through a handful of novelty boxing contests. However, in the event, Joshua made hard work of defeating his vastly less accomplished opponent, before his superior size and power eventually told
Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) were ordered on Tuesday by a French labor court to pay their former forward Kylian Mbappe up to 61 million euros (US$71.6 million) in unpaid wages and bonuses. France captain Mbappe, who left PSG in June last year to join Real Madrid, had been claiming more than 260 million euros in total from his former club. PSG in turn had demanded Mbappe pay them 440 million euros. Mbappe, 26, also claimed the Qatari-owned reigning European champions had applied the wrong French legal classification to his contract, but that was rejected by the court. The labor court said
The Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) would in future be held every four years instead of every two years, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) said on Saturday. The surprise decision was made at the body’s executive committee meeting in Rabat and announced at a news conference by CAF president Patrice Motsepe. The tournament, which brings in an estimated 80 percent of CAF’s revenue, has traditionally been held every two years since its inception in 1957. Yesterday marked the start of the 35th edition, hosted in Morocco with the home team taking on Comoros. Motsepe said the next AFCON finals,
RSS