Javelin thrower Liu Ya-ting and table tennis player Chen Po-yen on Wednesday carried the flag for Taiwan at the opening ceremony of the Paris Paralympics.
They were joined at the ceremony by 10 other Taiwanese athletes, including 48-year-old table tennis veteran Cheng Ming-chih, who is making his third appearance at the Paralympics after Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and Tokyo in 2021.
Liu, competing in the women’s javelin, told reporters that she was excited about participating in the opening ceremony as a flagbearer with 17-year-old paddler Chen, the youngest athlete on the team.
Photo: AFP / OIS/ IOC
Taiwan sent 13 athletes to Paris in seven disciplines — badminton, judo, table tennis, powerlifting, athletics, archery and taekwondo.
The athletes took the stage at Place de la Concorde after Syria.
More than 5,000 athletes from 168 countries participated in the opening event, which had about 50,000 spectators.
Photo courtesy of the Sports Administration
During its live broadcast, the host of the French public national television channel France 2 described the flag carried by Taiwan’s athletes as being of “Chinese Taipei, but it is Taiwan.”
President William Lai yesterday voiced his support for the nation’s athletes in Paris, writing on Facebook: “Taiwan is proud of you all.”
People should cheer for the Taiwanese Paralympic heroes, he wrote, adding that he has faith the athletes would give their all.
Photo: Reuters
On the first day of competition yesterday, Hu Guang-chiou and Yang I-chen lost their opening badminton match in Group B of the women’s doubles WH1-WH2, beaten 21-10, 21-19 by Switzerland’s Cynthia Sui Mathez and Ilaria Renggli at La Chapelle Arena.
In Group B of the men’s singles SU5, Fang Jen-yu lost 21-14, 21-18 against Malaysia’s Muhammad Fareez Mas Anuar.
Cai Yi-lin was to play China’s Lin Shuangbao in Group A of the women’s singles SH6 after press time last night.
In taekwondo, Taiwan’s Xiao Xiang-wen beat Ebrahim Danishi of Afghanistan 37-7 in their men’s K44 under-58kg round-of-16 bout at the Grand Palais.
In the quarter-finals, Xiao defeated Bopha Kong of France 22-1 to earn a spot in the semi-finals against Asaf Yasur of Israel after press time last night.
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS