Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/05/03
By: Lee Chin-Wei and Ko Lin

Taipei, May 3 (CNA) Taiwan’s Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎) regained her world No. 1 ranking after

successfully defending the Badminton Asia Championships title last weekend, according to the Badminton World Federation (BWF) on Thursday.

Tai held the top spot in the BWF’s world rankings for 72 consecutive weeks, but fell to second place after a recent change in the federation’s scoring system.

On Sunday, the Taiwanese player defeated Chen Yufei (陳雨菲) of China 21-19, 22-20 in the women’s singles final to win the 2018 Badminton Asia Championships, held in Wuhan, China, from April 24-29.

That was her second consecutive victory in the annual tournament.    [FULL  STORY]

Get ready to get dirty in this challenging obstacle race

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/05/03
By: Te’Qin Windham, Taiwan News, Staff Reporter

Taipei (Taiwan News)– The Spartan Race (全球障礙跑競賽的領導品牌) is coming to

Taoyuan this Saturday with Sprint/Super/Kids races at the Guanyin Coastal Recreation Area.

Spartan Race is an obstacle-course race varying in distance and difficulty, available in more than 20 countries and over 2 million people have participated. It includes various challenging obstacles, terrains, and barriers in which athletes have to conquer in order to race to the finish line.

Common Spartan obstacles include the rope climb, barbed wire crawl, fire jump, and spear throw. There are three main types of Spartan races: Sprint, Super and Beast; there are also kid’s races available.

The Sprint race is the shortest, which is 5+ Km and 20+ obstacles., while the Super is  13+ Km with 24+ obstacles. The Beast races are 20+ Km and 30+ obstacles; the kid’s races are about 800-1600 m with an emphasis on teamwork and fun.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/05/03
By: Lee Chin-wei and Kuan-lin Liu

Taipei, May 3 (CNA) The Sports Administration (SA) has drafted a program to make

Taiwan one of the top 100 national soccer teams in the world within six years, SA Director Lin De-fu (林德福) said on Thursday.

Lin said the administration is determined to make the sport more popular in Taiwan, whose national team currently ranks 121st in the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Rankings for men.

The director’s six-year plan includes the employment of at least 50 professional soccer coaches in local schools, almost double the current 27, despite the fact that more than 170 individuals have soccer coaching qualifications.

Furthermore, Lin said he is looking to establish 16 university teams, 32 high school teams, and 64 junior high teams, as well as a professional soccer league.
[FULL  STORY]

The 2018 National Badminton Team Championships will be held at the Chung Kung Hall of National Cheng Kung University in Tainan City, southern Taiwan from May 6 to May 13, featuring Taiwan ‘s top players

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/04/30
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)–The 2018 National Badminton Team Championships will be held

at the Chung Kung Hall of National Cheng Kung University in Tainan City, southern Taiwan from May 6 to May 13, featuring Taiwan ‘s top players, according to local news reports.

Chinese-language Liberty Times Net reported that Taiwan’s world No. 1 women’s singles badminton player Tai Tzu-ying and Taiwan’s top male shuttlers Chou Tien-chen and Wang Tzu-wei, all of whom represent Taiwan Cooperative Bank in their respective women’s first division and men’s first division, are expected to begin playing on May 8.

This year’s team championships drew record numbers of 261 participating teams and more than 2,000 players, according to the report. The first-division finals will start at 8 a.m. on May 13.      [FULL  STORY]

The World Wrestling Entertainment company is returning to Taiwan after a long absence

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/04/28
By: Duncan DeAeth, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – In what could be one of the most important events to hit Taiwan

this summer, it has been announced that WWE Smackdown will be returning Taiwan after five long years of absence.

On April 27, the WWE official events page was updated with an event scheduled for Sunday, July 1 at Taipei Arena. The episode of the weekly WWE Smackdown series will be recorded in live in Taipei and later broadcast to audiences in the rest of the world.

According to the WWE photo database, the last time the World Wrestling Entertainment Company made a stop in Taiwan was in July 2013 for a Raw live event. The company also came the previous year in August 2012.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 29, 2018
By: AFP, SHANGHAI

Lee Chong Wei yesterday suffered a shock defeat in the Asia Championships semi-

finals, going down in straight sets to rising Japanese star Kento Momota, as Taiwan’s Tai Tzu-ying reached the women’s finals.

The 35-year-old, fresh from winning Commonwealth Games gold and reaching the end of one of badminton’s great careers, lost 21-19, 21-14 to the unseeded Momota.

The 23-year-old Momota will play China’s Rio 2016 Olympic champion Chen Long in today’s final in Wuhan.

Third seed Chen was an emphatic 21-16, 21-18 winner over India’s unseeded H.S. Prannoy in the other semi-final.  [FULL  STORY]

Taiwanese pro baseball team Chinatrust Brothers will don ‘Dragon Ball Z’ uniforms on May 5 and 6

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/04/26
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Taiwanese professional baseball team Chinatrust Brothers

will wear uniforms for two games in May that are inspired by the Japanese anime TV series “Dragon Ball Z,” announced the team on April 23.

On May 5 and 6, during games with rival Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions, players from Chinatrust Brothers will don bright orange uniforms which match the color worn by a number of characters from the anime series, including the main protagonist Goku. The jerseys will be bright orange with navy blue trim, much like Goku’s outfit, but the “Kame”( 亀, turtle) symbol on the left chest will be changed to the Chinese character for “elephant” (象), the team’s mascot.

This is the first time a professional Taiwanese baseball team has worn a uniform which featured a theme based on the Japanese anime series, according to the team’s website.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/04/25
By: Joseph Yeh, CNA staff reporter 

Monday in downtown Taipei, 10:14 p.m. The day is coming to an end for most people, but

a group of young female ice hockey players have just begun a routine practice at Taipei Arena, home to the only standard rink in Taiwan.

Video courtesy of Taiwan’s women’s national ice hockey team

They are members of Taiwan’s women’s national ice hockey team, which stunned the world last month by finishing second in Group B of Division II of the 2018 Ice Hockey Women’s World Championships.

Having just qualified for Group B last year, Taiwan’s team of mostly college students in their early 20s and a high school senior toppled Turkey, Romania, New Zealand and Iceland before losing 6-1 to host Spain to emerge as the tournament’s Cinderella story.
[FULL  STORY]