Taiwan yesterday won three silver and three bronze medals on the first official day of the FISU World University Games in Chengdu, China.
Half of the medals were won in wushu.
Taiwanese wushu athlete Sun Chia-hung (孫家閎) finished second in the men’s taijijian, grabbing the country’s first medal of the games, previously known as the Universiade.
Photo courtesy of Chinese Taipei University Sports Federation
Sun scored 9.71 in a nearly four-minute performance, behind Hui Tak Yan Samuei (許得恩) of Hong Kong, who finished with 9.726 points.
Sun said he was happy with his performance.
“I couldn’t sleep because of the match, and got up early this morning to practice,” the 27-year-old said, adding that he visited Chengdu before the event to get used to the climate and food.
Taiwanese Lin Chien-hsi (林千禧) and Chen Yueh-hsi (陳岳禧) won bronze medals in the women’s and men’s changquan respectively, with Chen finishing with a score of 9.706.
Taiwan’s Hu Tzu-hsuan (胡子萱) won a silver medal in taekwondo, while Chen Yu-ju bagged a bronze medal in 10m air pistol shooting.
Olympic medalist Yang Yung-wei (楊勇緯) won Taiwan’s second silver medal in the men’s under-60kg category in judo.
The 25-year-old world No. 5 lost to world No. 48 Taiki Nakamura in the final 10 seconds of the bout on a katame-waza, after the Japanese held Yang down for 20 seconds.
Yang reached the final by beating Alessio Murrone of Germany in the round of 16 and Algerian Younes Ben Laribi in the quarter-finals, before topping 20-year-old Kamoliddin Bakhtiyorov of Uzbekistan in sudden death in their semi-final.
Despite not winning first place, Yang’s ranking was the highest achieved by a Taiwanese judoka in the World University Games.
“Of course I have regrets,” Yang said of his performance. “But this is not the end and I am more motivated to go forward than ever.”
Taiwan has 210 athletes competing in 16 categories at this year’s games, which end on Aug. 8.
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