The Tour de Taiwan is to start today with almost 200 riders from 31 countries set to cycle 670.3km over five individual stages, the national cycling association said.
The 192 riders representing 23 teams are to cover 83.2km in the first stage, consisting of eight loops in Taipei from Taipei City Hall to Jing Fu Men (景福門) and back.
Stage two of the annual professional road race covers 120.59km, as the cyclists make their way from Taoyuan to Jiaobanshan Park (角板山公園) on the hilly Northern Cross-Island Highway.
Photo: CNA
Along the way, they face one of the two toughest climbs in the race.
The riders are to travel southwest along Highway No. 61 through Taoyuan’s Guanyin (觀音) and Xinwu (新屋) districts, then head southeast on Highway No. 66, through Yangmei (楊梅) and Pingzhen (平鎮) districts, and on to the Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) through Dasi District (大溪) before arriving at Jiaobanshan Park.
In stage three on Tuesday, the riders are to cover 154.5km from Hsinchu to Taichung through Miaoli County.
The longest stage is the fourth, on Wednesday, covering 169.43km in 1.5 loops around Nantou County. It features another tough climb near the Xuanzang Temple (玄奘寺).
The riders are to start at Nantou County Hall, and cycle through Jiji (集集), Shuili (水里), Yuchi (魚池) and Puli (埔里) townships near Sun Moon Lake, before heading east toward Caotun (草屯), then back toward Nantou County Hall, Jiji and Shuili and finishing at the Xiangshan Visitor Center near Sun Moon Lake.
Stage five on Thursday would have the riders cover 146.44km, facing some of the biggest climbs in the race.
They are to start from the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum in Dashu District (大樹) in Kaohsiung, then head north through Qishan (旗山), Meinong (美濃), Liugui (六龜) and Jiaxian (甲仙) townships, before heading south through Shanlin (杉林), Qishan, Dashu, Yanchao (燕巢), Nanzi (楠梓) and Zuoying (左營) townships, to finish at Kaohsiung National Stadium.
Italian road racer Omar El Gouzi, who is to compete in his first Tour de Taiwan, said at a press conference on Friday in Taipei that his team, Green Project-Bardiani CSF-Faizane, are well represented at this year’s event.
“We have two sprinters and three climbers, so we can defend ourselves and attack every stage. So we will try to bring home some stage races and, also, if we can, the overall race,” El Gouzi said.
Members of the Spanish Equipo Kern Pharma team also expected to do well.
“Our goal is GC [general] classification. This is a really special race for us. We prepared really well. We came with huge ambitions and nice expectations,” Spanish cyclist Urko Berrade said.
The Tour de Taiwan, which dates back to 1978, has been part of the UCI Asia Tour since the creation of the UCI Continental Circuits in 2005, Union Cycliste Internationale president David Lappartient said.
“The Tour de Taiwan shines the spotlight on a beautiful country, and offers the riders the best of all worlds, from testing climbs through stunning countryside to high-adrenaline city-center circuits,” Lappartient said in a statement.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods