Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday morning visited several sports venues in Taoyuan that are to be used in this year’s Summer Universiade and praised their quality, giving them a score of “99 percent.”
Accompanied by Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦), Ko visited the National Taiwan Sport University (NTSU) Arena’s swimming pool and water polo facilities, the track and field venue at Ming Chuan University’s Taoyuan campus and the taekwondo venue at the Taoyuan Arena.
“We are very grateful for the Taoyuan City Government’s help with the venues. I did not have to worry at all,” Ko said. “However, I am embarrassed to give them a full score of 100 percent, so I will give them 99 percent.”
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Taoyuan is to host 15 of the Universiade’s venues and the city government has worked closely with the Taipei City Government to get them ready, Cheng said, adding that they would all meet the required standards.
In preparation for the games, the Taipei City Government allocated NT$4.9 million (US$161,184) to the Taoyuan City Government to renovate the city’s sports venues, while the Taoyuan City Government allocated NT$8.6 million.
The NTSU Arena now hosts a high-tech prefabricated pool that cost more than NT$100 million, Cheng said.
The World Taekwondo Federation said the Taoyuan Arena’s taekwondo venue is the best Universiade taekwondo venue of the past 15 years, Cheng said.
“We will find another place [in the city] to relocate the prefabricated pool to and a technical team has already evaluated several venues,” Cheng said. “We hope the utilization rate will be high, but the swimming pool is 2m deep, so we plan to adjust the depth before letting the public use the pool.”
If the Summer Universiade is a success, not only Taipei, but the whole of Taiwan would win praise, he said.
Yesterday marked Ko’s fourth exchange visit with city and county heads.
Such exchanges deepen friendship between Taipei and other cities or counties, Ko said, adding that they provide a good opportunity to learn and improve governance.
Asked what he had learned from Cheng, Ko said that he admires Cheng’s handling of relations between the city council and the city government.
Ko described himself as a political neophyte, and said that he is like a vehicle that has a “learner driver” sticker on its bumper, clumsy at first, but now much more steady.
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