A tug-of-war team from the Taipei Jingmei Girls High School won the World Indoor Championship in Cesenatico, Italy, on Saturday, thanks to the success of the athletes’ strenuous efforts to train and bulk up over the past several months.
The Jingmei team beat teams from China, Japan and Switzerland in three rounds of competition to capture the 540kg category title.
The team secured a landslide in the first phase of the round-robin competition and defeated the Swiss squad in the second stage of the contest to enter the finals with a score of 2-0.
In the best-of-three final, Jingmei lost their first match to a formidable Chinese team, but they bounced back to win the following two matches and clinch the title.
Jingmei school principal Lin Li-hua said yesterday that she was proud of the team’s determination and sporting prowess.
“The whole team endured hardship and overcame many obstacles to qualify for the competition and eventually emerge as the winners,” Lin said.
“Members of the team were very thrilled and cried after they won the championship in Italy and those of us who were back in Taiwan, we cried too,” Lin said.
Because the Sports Affairs Council (SAC) would only subsidize teams for the 540kg competition, the 12 team members had been piling on the kilos to gain enough weight to qualify over the past few months, in addition to doing intense physical training.
The team managed to increase their combined weight by 60kg to qualify for the competition, Lin said, adding that one member gained 20kg.
Moreover, the school’s parents association and the teachers donated more than NT$500,000 to help finance the travel costs of the team. Government regulations stated the SAC would only finance travel for eight members of the team.
Lin said the squad would undergo a weight-loss program upon their return tomorrow in order to qualify for a 500kg competition at the Asian Cup on Sunday.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG
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