doha-2006.com/gis/Sports/BK/ … 1-02-00027
In the basketball. Taiwan really needs to develop a better sports program.
Kind of hard to get international sympathy if your team is losing all the time.
Hopefully in the ROC traditonal sport of Taekwondo Chinese Taipei will do better.
‘Chinese Taipei’ did win the gold in baseball of course… and there’s an event mainland China could use a lot of help on.
the irony is so sublime…
I am dazed and confused, but I think international sympathy goes to the perpetual loser, the little guy with no chance, the underdog. For example, Americans have the “loveable loser” Chicago Cubs while most people hate the perpetual winner New York Yankees.
These sensibilities extend to other facets. Americans would depise murderous regimes that subjegate a population to terror (not naming any names here; the guilty know who they are). Who wouldn’t cheer for one-time political prisoners to turn the tables and become officeholders?
Let’s just say it as it is: “CHina beats Taiwan in basketball”. None of this Chinglish “Chinese Taipei” crap.
Who cares who beat who in what some like to impose a civil war framwork upon. Civil, indeed. It just defeats the whole purpose of sport.
@doha
Taiwan did not fare well at basketball.
Ok, no problem.
Yet they played well in a great game in baseball.
Outstanding.
One would think that the ZhongGuo element would feel some pride in the fact that their brethren did so well, especially in a game vs. Japan.
Yet, no. Politics and Puppetry rear their ugly heads.
SHame, Shame.
They also won gold medals in soft tennis…
I wonder how they’ll do in soft wrestling and soft pingpong …
And tennis. Hoo-argh! Commie Chinese peasants eat Taiwanese dust! Yeah! Get back to eating your babies and shitting in the fields, ya shovel-mouthed bogtrotters!
It was only netball. Better luck next time, girls.
What the hell is soft tennis?
(I know I could Google, but I’d rather stew in indignation.)
Baseball is the ultimate sport.
Hurrah hurrah hurrah!
MikeN, soft Tennis is Tennis played with different raquette and different ball. Let us say you cannot make aces when serving…
Why ac-dropout mentions basketball is beyond me.
Basketball is a tall man’s game. East Asians will never be world champions in basketball because of the height factor.
Even China is a basketball laggard when faced with American and European teams.
Baseball on the other hand - any race / country can do well.
So ac-dropout, would you prefer to be:
And don’t mention Yao ming - He’s a once in a century accident of nature. You’ll have a billion Wang Zhi Zhi before you get another Yao Ming.
Being a basketball and Yao fan, I can tell you that basketball is a team sport. A well-run (alas less talented) team will defeat bunch of tall talented players; hence the recent setbacks for the US in basketball in world competition.
For China, the talent is already there, but the players need experience and more team work. If China can get its players some European and American basketball experiences and then get a good national coach to pull everything together, in 10-15 years, China will be competing for Gold.
[quote=“LA”]Being a basketball and Yao fan, I can tell you that basketball is a team sport. A well-run (alas less talented) team will defeat bunch of tall talented players; hence the recent setbacks for the US in basketball in world competition.
For China, the talent is already there, but the players need experience and more team work. If China can get its players some European and American basketball experiences and then get a good national coach to pull everything together, in 10-15 years, China will be competing for Gold.[/quote]
That is a lot of “ifs”. And that is IF American and especially European teams do not improve at the same rate. I was watching the Asian games and following basketball in particular now that baseball is over. It merely confirms what I’ve been thinking all along – you can’t win basketball games even if you’re as good as your opponents if you have a height disadvantage. In basketball, height is power. So all things being equal, asians will be starting with a disadvantage.
What? There are plenty of tall Asians and those on national teams are not any shorter than the norm.
What? There are plenty of tall Asians and those on national teams are not any shorter than the norm.[/quote]
No, but are they as athletic as say - Americans or Europeans?
By the way you ask that question, I assume you’re expecting the answer to be “no”… but I don’t really know why you’d assume so. Are Americans or Europeans really that much more athletic? Have you seen Yi Jianlian play? (Not that he’s any good, but he’s certainly athletic.) Ever heard of Liu Xiang, the current world record holder in the 110m hurdles? What about the Japanese/Taiwanese players in the MLB?
For a long time, it was also commonly believed that predominantly Caucasian basketball teams from Europe couldn’t compete with the black-dominated American basketball team. That was before Greece and Argentina beat the US national team.
Are the Greeks also synonymous with “athletic” and “tall” in your mind?
Yea, I had a chuckle reading that rambling rants about that race difference rationalization again. Ten to fifteen years; mark my word. You heard it here first. 
The magic word is teamwork.