While the Sports Administration acts as overseer of the nation’s sports associations, experts say the government must avoid overstepping its authority and hurting athletes.
A major overhaul of the sports associations was proposed after several athletes complained about the treatment they received while competing in international events, from tennis player Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) quitting the Rio de Janiero Olympics to the penalties handed down by the Chinese Taipei Badminton Association to Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎) for overstepping the terms of a sponsorship agreement.
Sports Administration Director-General Ho Jwo-fei (何卓飛) on Monday told a public hearing hosted by the New Power Party (NPP) legislative caucus that the disputes between the athletes and sports bureaucrats have happened before and the Rio Games showed it was time to change how the sports associations operate.
The Civil Associations Act (人民團體法) has been proven inadequate in regulating the associations, while some people have questioned whether the associations can truly represent the nation considering the way they handle membership applications, Ho said.
“Many of these national associations accept mainly individuals. Some associations have even rejected applications filed by members of a group from different locations,” he said.
The associations should be overhauled to focus on the athletes and coaches, instead of the groups’ management, he said.
The National Sports Act (國民體育法) should be amended to regulate the operations of sports associations because they accept government subsidies and function as the point of contact between the government and international sports organizations, he said.
Ho said that he supported the reform proposal made by the NPP, which includes recruiting professionals to manage the associations, expanding association memberships to more qualified athletes, having an independent member serve on the board of each group, enforcing measures to ensure that associations manage their finances transparently and suspending those groups that violate the regulations.
Most of the participants at the public hearing also agreed on the general direction of reform, but cautioned the undue interferences from the government could hurt the associations and athletes.
Lawyer Hsieh Fu-kai (謝富凱) said the sports associations, which are private-sector groups, determine if an athlete is able to compete in international competitions, but the government cannot meddle with them too much or the associations could face sanctions from international sports bodies.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) last year suspended the Kuwait Olympic Committee after the Kuwaiti government amended legislation covering sports, he said.
Taiwan’s government need to protect the nation’s athletes as it exercises its authority to oversee the sports associations, Hsieh said.
Sports commentator Max Shih (石明瑾) also cited the Indonesian Football Association, which was suspended by FIFA and barred from the qualifiers of the 2018 World Cup and 2019 Asian Cup because of government meddling in Indonesia’s domestic league.
Any amendment to the National Sports Act must clearly define the relationship between the associations, the athletes and the government, so that athletes know if they should seek arbitration and lawsuits to settle disputes, Shih said.
Lee Shiao-tee (李孝悌), a professor at National Taiwan Sports University, said athletes should form a union to fight for their interests in case of disputes with sports associations.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
RSS