Nearly 20,000 swimmers participated in the annual Sun Moon Lake mass swimming event on Sunday morning.

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/09/24
By: George Liao,Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—Nearly 20,000 swimmers participated in an annual Sun Moon

Lake mass swimming event in Nantou County, central Taiwan on Sunday morning.

Now in its 34th year, the cross-lake Sun Moon Lake Swimming Carnival event takes place around the Mid Autumn Festival every year and has attracted swimming enthusiasts from all over Taiwan and around the world to participate.

A total of 19,862 swimmers attempted the 3 km swim this year, including 896 foreign swimmers hailing from 36 countries, 243 physically challenged persons as well as Taiwan’s former president Ma Ying-jeou, who participated for the 5th time.      [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/09/22
By: Oscar Wu and Kuan-lin Liu

Taipei, Sept. 22 (CNA) Taiwan added to its medal tally at the 2017 Asian Indoor &

Martial Arts Games on Friday when two Taiwanese billiards players faced off in the 9-ball pool singles final.

Chang Jun-lin (張榮麟) grabbed gold by outlasting Ko Pin-yi (柯秉逸) 9-8 in a race to 9 racks that Ko seemed poised to win for most of the contest.

Ko won three of the first four racks and also took 6-3 and 8-6 leads, but he could never put away Chang, who won the final three racks to take the match.

“I played really poorly today. My lead in the beginning was due to luck,” said Ko, who settled for silver.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/09/21
By: Oscar Wu and Y.F. Low

Taipei, Sept. 21 (CNA) Taiwan won another gold medal in taekwondo at the 2017 5th

Asian Indoor & Martial Arts Games in Turkmenistan Thursday.

Chen Yu-chuang (陳宥庄) beat China’s Zhou Lijun (周俐君) 20-10 in the women’s 57-kg division final.

Taiwan has so far bagged two golds, one silver and two bronze medals at the games, ranking 16th by medal count.

The other gold medal was won by Hung Yu-ting (洪幼婷) in the taekwondo women’s 49-kg division on Wednesday.    [SOURCE]

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/09/19
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—Taiwan’s ultra-marathon runner Tommy Chen (陳彥博)

proudly displayed Taiwan’s national flag on Sunday after finishing 330 km Tor des Géants, which features 25 summits along the route.

Chen finished the run in 106 hours and 45 minutes and was placed 51. Even though the result is not brilliant, what matters to Chen is that he has conquered one of the 10 toughest endurance trail races in the world.

Tor des Géants, which must be completed in less than 150 hours, is a race of 330 km and 24,000 m of difference in altitude, which is around three times the height of Mount Everest.

Chen shared his experience on his Facebook page, saying that he injured his left knee after 43 hours into the race, and the pain from the injury intensified so much after he passed the 200 km mark that the idea of giving up the race first came into his mind, but he swallowed a painkiller pill and continued running. Soon after passing the 280 km mark, a heavy rain began to fall, and when he reached the last summit, the rain suddenly turned into a blizzard and it was freezing. He finally overcame all the hardship and completed the race.    [FULL  STORY]

FORMIDABLE:The national team are on Friday to face North Korea, who crushed Macau 10-0 in their opening Group F match on Monday that included two hat-tricks

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 20, 2017
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Taiwan on Monday rallied to beat Brunei 2-1 in dramatic fashion with two late goals,

securing second place in Group F of qualifying for next year’s Asian Football Confederation U-16 Championship.

Five East Asian national teams made up of players born on or after Jan. 1, 2002, are competing in the group, with Taiwan hosting all the group matches at Fu Jen Catholic University Stadium in New Taipei City.

In Monday’s second contest, Brunei’s Hirman Abdul Latip fired the visitors ahead 1-0 early with a long-range volley.

The hosts tried to battle back, but were denied repeatedly throughout most of the match.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/09/18
By: Joseph Yeh

It should have been the proudest moment in the career of Taiwanese tennis ace

Chan Yung-jan (詹詠然) when she became the first Taiwanese player to win a U.S. Open title, along with the women’s doubles partner Martina Hingis, last Sunday.

Instead, Chan was forced to issue a letter of apology to local fans. Rather than being lauded as the “Pride of Taiwan” as athletes invariably are after winning glory overseas, she is arguably the most disliked sports person in Taiwan and finds herself embroiled in the biggest PR crisis of her life.

The reason many Taiwanese have taken a dislike to Chan can be traced back to the 28-year-old’s premature departure from the Taipei 2017 Universiade late last month.

After winning gold in the women’s doubles, Chan was scheduled to play in the semi-finals of the mixed doubles a few hours later on Aug. 28, but announced her withdrawal on medical advice suffering from heatstroke. As a result, her mixed doubles partner, Hsieh Cheng-peng (謝振鵬) was forced to forfeit the match.
[FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 18, 2017
By: Dave Carroll / Staff reporter, with AFP and Reuters

Taiwan yesterday failed to pull off the upset they required in their Davis Cup

Asia/Oceania Group I playoff at the Yang Gu Tennis Park in South Korea as the visitors were relegated.

Taiwan’s world No. 592 Yu Cheng-yu took on world No. 44 Chung Hye-on in the first reverse singles rubber looking for an unlikely victory, but was defeated 6-4, 6-2, 6-1 in one hour, 56 minutes as the hosts took an unassailable 3-1 lead in the best-of-five match.

Chung saved both break points he faced and converted six of 21, winning 99 of the 167 points contested.

There was some consolidation for the visitors in the dead second reverse singles rubber when Wu Tung-lin won a shortened three-set match 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 over Lee Jea-moon in 1 hour, 58 minutes.

Wu saved 10 of 15 break points and converted seven of 10, firing down eight aces to make the final score 3-2 to the hosts.

Typhoon rains again yesterday washed out the playoffs between Japan and Brazil with the hosts on the cusp of victory.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 18, 2017
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Taiwan soccer entered a new era this week when a trio of English soccer officials,

headed by Gary White, officially took control of the men’s national team to prepare players for a friendly against Mongolia, before hosting Bahrain for a Double Ten National Day match in Taipei as part of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup qualifiers.

White has been appointed head coach, while Louis Lancaster is assistant coach and former Queens Park Rangers goalkeeping coach David Rouse is goalkeeping coach.

White has been dubbed the “manager for island nations” by local media, as he has held coaching roles in the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Guam.

Spectators can look forward to a revamped Taiwan team that plays an attacking game, White said at a media conference introducing the new coaches on Friday, adding that he wants to bring “sexy football” to Taiwan.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/09/17
By: Li Chin-wei and William Yen

Taipei, Sept. 17 (CNA) Taiwanese tennis player Lu Yen-hsun (盧彥勳) dropped out of

the ATP Shanghai Challenger finals Sunday because of an injured right shoulder after losing the first set in a tiebreaker.

Lu faced Wu Yibing (吳易昺) in the finals, a 17-year-old Chinese tennis player who won the 2017 U.S. Open junior singles and doubles titles.

The final score of the game was 7-6(6).

Lu, 34 years old, has won 29 Challenger events with a current Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) ranking of 35.    [FULL  STORY]