Taiwan entered the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium to enthusiastic cheers yesterday at the spectacular Opening Ceremony of the Asian Games in Jakarta.
The nation’s 108 athletes in 11 disciplines along with 39 doctors and support staff marched in the Parade of Nations beneath a banner reading “Team Chinese Taipei” held by weightlifter Kuo Hsing-chun, a bronze medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Delegates also held banners that said “Terima Kasih” — “thank you” in Indonesian — and “We love Jakarta.”
Photo: AP
More than 50,000 spectators also cheered wildly as athletes from the rival Koreas paraded side-by-side behind a “unification” flag.
The two nations have fielded 60 athletes in combined teams along with larger contingents for their respective national squads.
North and South Korean athletes are competing together in several sports, including women’s basketball and rowing.
South Korea Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon and several North Korean ministers watched as the athletes, many holding hands, paraded by in blue-and-white uniforms behind South Korean basketballer Lim Yung-hui and North Korean soccer player Ju Kyong-chol, who together carried the flag.
It was a virtual repeat of the joint march during the Winter Olympics in February in the South Korean ski resort of Pyeongchang, minus the gloves, parkas and fur hats.
However, the scenery for this was tropical, as about 42,000 people packed the stadium for an elaborate ceremony showcasing diverse Indonesian culture.
Aside from the rousing applause for Taiwan and Unified Korea, teams from Palestine, Syria and Indonesia received extra bursts of enthusiasm from the crowd.
Korean spectator Hwang Miri said the sight of the athletes marching together made her feel unification of the two nations was possible in her lifetime.
“Looking at all of these people working together and playing together, even walking all together in this unified uniform and the unified flag, it is such an enormous feeling,” Hwang said.
The show began with a slickly produced video portraying Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo stuck in traffic — a play on one of Jakarta’s major challenges in hosting the Games — donning a black helmet and jumping a motorbike over a ramp to reach the stadium in time.
The motorbike shown in the video sped into the stadium and its helmeted driver disappeared into a tunnel before the real Jokowi appeared in the VIP area.
Much of the stadium was filled with a rainforest-covered mountain that formed the backdrop for a show based on air, earth, wind and fire.
Meanwhile, the Olympic Council of Asia confirmed there would be no last-minute reprieve for banned weightlifting powerhouse China.
Both China, who won seven golds in the 2014 Asian Games, and Kazakhstan, who took one gold, are among nine nations serving 12-month International Weightlifting Federation suspensions for multiple doping violations.
Rumors had circulated that China could be reinstated by the federation after the nation’s banned athletes suddenly appeared on the official Games Web site two days ago.
However, the federation on Friday agreed at an executive board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, to keep monitoring the nine countries before making any changes to their banned status.
“We follow the rules of the International Weightlifting Federation,” council director-general Husain al-Musallam said.
“They were [on the Web site] because we were waiting, we were putting everything on standby so if the decision was taken we can put them there within five minutes,” he added.
Additional reporting by AFP
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