A program that supported Taiwan’s athletes in the run-up to the 2024 Paris Olympics would continue after an initiative launched in 2018 for the Tokyo Games achieved record-breaking results, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said on Thursday.
The nation’s athletes have won 12 medals in Tokyo, more than doubling the previous record of five in 2000 and 2004.
Not only is the Tokyo haul a new record, but it more than triples the nation’s results at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, at which Taiwan won one gold and two bronzes, Su told a Cabinet meeting in Taipei, prior to the news that world No. 3 karateka Wen Tzu-yun (文姿云) won a bronze medal in the women’s kumite 55kg category.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Even more valuable has been the excitement the athletes’ success has sparked, with one in every three people, or more than 7.75 million viewers, tuning in to watch Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎) play China’s Chen Yufei (陳雨菲) in the final of the women’s badminton singles on Sunday last week, he said.
Everyone is cheering on Tai, gymnast Lee Chih-kai (李智凱) — who won silver in the pommel horse on Sunday last week — and the nation’s other stars, creating collective memories akin to when the Gold Dragon baseball team beat a US squad to win the Little League World Series in 1969, Su said.
Yet to stand on the Olympic stage, every athlete must spend years training in solitude, expending effort that others cannot even begin to imagine, he said.
Bronze medal winner Lin Yun-ju (林昀儒) might be called a “table tennis prodigy,” but the athlete himself rejects the title, saying he must hit the little balls tens of thousands of times every day, only not doing so during competitions, Su said.
Gold medal-winning weightlifter Kuo Hsing-chun (郭婞淳) must lift bar after silent bar, enduring even the most agonizing conditions to lift greater weights, he said.
Apart from these athletes’ tremendous efforts, the government also has a role to play, Su said.
The government must take a multi-pronged approach through funding, policymaking and legislative efforts to maximize results, which includes everything from creating a supportive environment to caring for athletes, he said.
To achieve this in the run-up to the Tokyo Games, the Sports Administration launched an initiative to prepare the nation’s athletes to “go for gold,” Su said.
The Sports Administration said that it allocated NT$300 million (US$10.79 million) each year for a total investment of NT$1.2 billion over the four years leading up to the delayed Tokyo Games.
The program helps with specialized support for teams, travel to international competitions and training, equipment and sports science and research, it said.
For example, Kuo uses a smart barbell tracking system to help her coaches prevent injuries and identify movement issues, it said.
Not only did all 38 key athletes trained through the initiative qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, 19 of them finished in the top eight of their respective competitions, while 12 won medals, Su said.
The Sports Administration program is also to cover early preparation for the 2024 Games, with a continuing annual budget of NT$300 million to total NT$2.1 billion after seven years, it said.
From 2016 to this year, the Sports Administration’s annual budget rose from NT$8 billion to NT$13.4 billion, Su said.
In addition, the second and third phases of a project to build a nearly NT$10 billion national training center were approved in 2016 and 2019 respectively, with the goal of providing professional training and rest venues for athletes and support staff, he added.
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