Taipei Times
Date: Aug 04, 2020
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Taiwan Steel on Sunday grabbed three points with a narrow 1-0 win against Hang Yuan FC, to move into the No. 2 spot on the Taiwan Football Premier League (TFPL) log, while Taipower FC beat NTUS 2-0 to maintain first place.

Taking advantage early in the match of opposition defenders who had not yet settled down, Taiwan Steel’s attacking trio of Wu Chun-ching, Marc Fenelus from the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Benchy Astama from Haiti pushed forward with good passes.

After only one minute of play, Fenelus dribbled from the right flank, feeding a short pass inside the penalty area to Astama, who slotted the ball into the net past goalkeeper Huang Chiu-lin.

It was Astama’s eighth goal of the season, and he is now third on the TFPL scoring chart.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 08/03/2020
By: Yang Chih-fang and Kay Liu

Kaohsiung, Aug. 3 (CNA) The world's top ranked female badminton player, Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎), found playing a male opponent for a second day in a row too much to overcome Monday, losing her match in a competition organized for Taiwan's elite athletes.

Taiwan is holding eight days of competition in 12 different sports at the National Sports Training Center's main site in Kaohsiung and shooting facility in Taoyuan to keep its Olympic-caliber athletes sharp in the absence of international tournaments, and badminton is one of the events on the schedule.

(Click here for the video of the final matches on Monday. Tai's match began at 2:13:46. Commentary in Chinese.)

To give Tai a workout, the competition organizers decided to pit her against fresh male opponents on consecutive days in the three-day badminton event, and it proved to be her undoing.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 04, 2020
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Taiwan Steel on Sunday grabbed three points with a narrow 1-0 win against Hang Yuan FC, to move into the No. 2 spot on the Taiwan Football Premier League (TFPL) log, while Taipower FC beat NTUS 2-0 to maintain first place.

Taking advantage early in the match of opposition defenders who had not yet settled down, Taiwan Steel’s attacking trio of Wu Chun-ching, Marc Fenelus from the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Benchy Astama from Haiti pushed forward with good passes.

After only one minute of play, Fenelus dribbled from the right flank, feeding a short pass inside the penalty area to Astama, who slotted the ball into the net past goalkeeper Huang Chiu-lin.

It was Astama’s eighth goal of the season, and he is now third on the TFPL scoring chart.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 07/31/2020
By: Huang Chiao-wen and Kay Liu

Taipei, July 31 (CNA) Taiwan's top athletes will compete in a government-organized competition starting Saturday as part of their preparations for the Summer Olympics, which have been postponed to 2021.

The eight-day, 12-discipline event will be held by the Sports Administration at the National Sports Training Center's main site in Kaohsiung and a shooting facility in Taoyuan and open with badminton matches, organizers said.

Taiwanese athletes had secured 32 spots in 10 sports, including gymnastics, table tennis and archery, at the Tokyo Olympics, before the Games were suspended for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Sports Administration is hoping to use the competition to keep elite Taiwanese athletes sharp in the absence of international competition in their respective disciplines because of ongoing restrictions on international travel and large gatherings.    [FULL  STORY]

MONEY MATTERS: While COVID-19 played a major role in the decision, the CTBA also found it hard to secure sponsorship, and ticket sales would have been affected

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 30, 2020
By: Shelley Shan / Staff reporter, with AFP, TOKYO

The Yonex Taipei Open badminton tournament has been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a funding shortfall, the CTBA said yesterday.

This was the first time that the tournament, a Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Tour Super 300-level competition, has been canceled since it began in 1980.

The Taipei Open has been held annually since 1980. The tournament was to be played at the Taipei Arena from Sept. 1 to Sept. 6, with total prize money of US$500,000.

The CTBA said that it was deeply concerned about whether the Taipei Open would proceed as scheduled after the BWF announced changes to the tournament schedule in May.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 07/28/2020
By: Huang Chiao-wen and Matthew Mazzetta

Taipei, July 28 (CNA) Four million people in Taiwan on Tuesday won NT$500 (US$17.07) vouchers towards sports related spending, after a live draw from a total of 6.98 million entries, according to the Sports Administration.

The voucher program, which was open to Taiwan citizens and their foreign spouses, received 6.98 million valid entries during the July 20-26 registration period, giving participants a 57 percent chance of winning, the agency said.

On Tuesday, the Sports Administration invited four athletes from Taiwan's 2021 Olympic delegation — sports shooter Lu Shao-chuan (呂紹全), table tennis player Cheng I-ching (鄭怡靜), boxer Chen Nien-chin (陳念琴) and swimmer Wang Kuan-hung (王冠閎) — to help select the winning entries at the live draw.

Each athlete threw two darts at a revolving dartboard numbered 01-20. The resulting 16-digit sequence was then plugged into a computer algorithm to randomly generate the winners based on participants' national identification card numbers.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 07/14/2020
By:Flor Wang and Yu Hsiao-han

Taipei, July 14 (CNA) The 2020 Penghu marathon started accepting applications at 5 p.m. Tuesday and the event, which takes place on Nov. 1, is expected to boost local tourism, the organizers said.

The 2020 Gaillardia Islands Penghu Cross-Sea Marathon is looking to attract 3,500 runners, from more than 20 countries, which would be about 10 percent more than last year, Penghu National Scenic Area Administration Director Hsu Tzung-min (許宗民) told a news conference.

At the same time, the event will bring more than 5,000 visitors to Penghu, giving a boost to local tourism, according to Hsu.

The event, certified by the IAAF (the International Association of Athletics Federations) and AIMS (the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races), offers participants, spectators and tourists a special treat because of the archipelago's unique geography, culture and landscape, Hsu said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 07/13/2020
By: Lung Po-an and Ko Lin

Taipei, July 13 (CNA) Taiwan's Pan Cheng-tsung (潘政琮) ended the Workday Charity Open golf tournament in the United States on Sunday with a disappointing 3-under-par 285, which left him near the bottom of the table.

Pan finished the final round 16 shots behind Collin Morikawa of the United States, who won the title with a 19-under-par 269.

A double bogey on the par-4 first and a bogey on the par-4 10th dashed any hopes Pan might have had of a higher finish, and he ended the day's event with a 2-under 70.

Morikawa, who is currently ranked 29th on the PGA Tour, finished the day 6-under 66.
[FULL  STORY]