Team Taiwan earned the country two gold medals last night, as the nation's Taekwondo fighters kicked their way into athletic history.
Men's Taekwondo fighter Chu Mu-yen (
Chu, 22-years-old and 173cm tall, and Chen, 26-years-old and 166cm tall, reached the finals after beating their opponents during the first two rounds.
In the semifinals, Chen handily defeated Canada's Ivett Gonda with a score of 3-2 and qualified to fight against Cuba's Yanelis Yuliet Labrada Diaz in the finals, who she also defeated.
When the referee raised Chen's hand to announce her victory, hundreds of Taiwanese people who were attending the competition waved flags and screamed with excitement.
Chu defeated Egyptian athlete Tamer Bayoumi to get a shot at the gold medal. He faced Oscar Francisco Salazar Blanco of Mexico.
Chen easily defeated Nepal's Sangina Baidya with a score 4-0 during the preliminary round. Chen was faster than her opponent, and she continually used her left leg for simple kicks without a lot of window dressing.
Meanwhile, during the quarterfinal, Chen faced a tough challenge from Columbia's Gladys Alicia Mora-Romero, and the athletes reached a draw after two rounds with 0-0.
Though Chen displayed a more positive performance, adopting different movements of roundhouse technical kicks, and left and right wing attacks, yet Mora-Romero reacted with a cautious tactic to ignore Chen's lure movements.
Just like those previous international Taekwondo session, protests against the referees' unfairness from losers interfered the games. Thailand and Austria both protested to the Olympic Organization Committee. Thailand's coach even temporarily stood in the ring and refused to leave while the second quarterfinal was in progress.
In the Men's under-58kg, Chu who is nicknamed the "warlord" of Taiwan, knocked out his first opponent, Libya's Ezedin Salem, within one minute at the preliminary round.
Chu scored four points with three offensive kicks, including a direct attack on Salem's face, bloodying his nose.
Egypt's Tamer Bayoumi and Greece's Michalis Mouroutsos both smoothly crushed their initial opponents in the preliminary round, to contend with each other in the quarterfinal.
Though thousands of Greek supporters cheered on Mouroutsos, who became a Greek national hero after winning the 2000 Sydney Olympic Taekwondo gold medal, the Egyptian athlete demonstrated his skills to win the match with a score of 10-3.
Chu proved his reputation by beating Spain's Juan Ramos in the quarterfinal match 9-1.
Chu's coach Liou Ching-wen (
"The only factor we were worrying about was an unfair judgment by the referee," Liou said.
He stressed that if any "particular" referee had tried to "manipulate" the results of the competition, he would have launched a strong protest in front of the international media.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
SHARED VALUES: The US, Taiwan and other allies hope to maintain the cross-strait ‘status quo’ to foster regional prosperity and growth, the former US vice president said Former US vice president Mike Pence yesterday vowed to continue to support US-Taiwan relations, and to defend the security and interests of both countries and the free world. At a meeting with President William Lai (賴清德) at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Pence said that the US and Taiwan enjoy strong and continued friendship based on the shared values of freedom, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Such foundations exceed limitations imposed by geography and culture, said Pence, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time. The US and Taiwan have shared interests, and Americans are increasingly concerned about China’s
RSS