After a two-year run of poor form and debilitating injuries, Taiwanese badminton duo Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) and Lee Yang (李洋) yesterday captured their first title since winning the men’s doubles gold at the Tokyo Olympics in late July 2021.
Wang and Lee upended fifth seeds Takuro Hoki and Yugo Kobayashi of Japan 21-19, 21-13 in the men’s doubles final of the Daihatsu Japan Open, almost two years to the day after they won Taiwan’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in badminton in the same city.
The victory had not been expected, as Lee originally booked a flight home on Saturday, but it certainly brought the pair joy and relief.
Photo: AP
“I love Tokyo,” Wang wrote on Facebook. “It has finally happened after making everybody wait so long... Thank you everyone for waiting with us.”
“This wasn’t just my first title since winning Olympic gold, it was my first Super 750 title, which is a real milestone,” he added, referring to the tournament’s tier, one of the highest just below the Olympics, World Championships and Super 1000 events.
“We finally have our breakthrough,” Lee wrote in a separate Facebook post.
“I can’t guarantee that we’ll always win in the future, but I will continue to feel passionate about the game and appreciate everything that badminton brings to me,” Lee said.
The victory came after the Taiwanese duo, who came into the Tokyo event unseeded and ranked 18th in the world, ran a gauntlet of seeded teams, proving they might have finally regained their form.
Against Hoki and Kobayashi, the Taiwanese maintained a steady lead throughout the first game until the Japanese ran off three straight points to tie it at 19. Lee and Wang rallied to win the next two points, and they dominated the second game after falling behind 7-6.
The victory would help the duo build up ranking points to earn the best possible seed in next year’s Paris Olympics.
“This is part of the points cycle for Paris, so getting a lot of ranking points will take some of the pressure off,” Lee told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper).
He also acknowledged that their difficulties in the past two years were due to more than just injuries.
“We have to face up [to the issues] with courage. We can’t just ignore it when we don’t play well. We have to find ways to deal with the issues we have,” Lee said.
Lee and Wang were last night to fly to Sydney to prepare for the Super 500 Sathio Group Australian Open, which starts tomorrow.
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary