What are the major sports in Taiwan?

What are the major sports in Taiwan?

stadiumzone.net

Shows almost all stadiums in the world, I guess Taiwan is not a football (soccer) loving country? How big is football in Taiwan?

Greetings :notworthy:

Basketball and baseball … not soccer (football) … oh, and table dry swimming (mahjong)

Football’s non-existant, although there’s a couple of amateur leagues populated largely by Brit and Euro expats with a smattering of local enthusiasts.
Basketball and baseball are the most popular, far and away, and are the only sports played at a pro level I think.
Golf is very big here, too.

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badminton?

Right. Badminton’s very popular, with a lot of very good players at club level.
There’s other slightly stranger sports played here, too, which can also be very popular. The old folk in my neighbourhood, for example, play a weird game that’s kind of like a cross between golf and croquet, which I never saw anywhere else.

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Tennis is increasing in popularity.

Dodgeball?

Taiwan is pretty congested with not much open space, hence indoor games which require relatively little space such as basketball, dodgeball and badminton are favoured. Golf is popular, but horrendously expensive. They love all things American, so basketball and baseball are the most popular. Ice hockey seems to be taking off, too. Not big on gridiron, though. “Not big” being the operative words. Small football and cricket leagues, but run mainly by expats.

[quote=“sandman”]Right. Badminton’s very popular, with a lot of very good players at club level.
There’s other slightly stranger sports played here, too, which can also be very popular. The old folk in my neighbourhood, for example, play a weird game that’s kind of like a cross between golf and croquet, which I never saw anywhere else.[/quote]
Really??? What’s it like? Large ball, single club (combo driver-putter), long holes, object is to sink the ball?

They mark out a field with white tape, so they have several “holes” which are actually croquet-style metal hoops. The balls are off-round I think – like lawn bowls. Big and heavy, like mine. The hitting implement is a wooden mallet a la croquet, but it looks a lot meatier. The head is wooden and shaped and sized like a Taiwan beer bottle. They have to whack the balls pretty hard and the field isn’t that smooth. Doesn’t look very accurate to me, but I suppose there’s some finesse to it to play well.

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The Taiwanese are quite good a billiard, if that’s counts as a sport.

Also, taekwondo and women’s weightlifting.

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Eating

I wonder if that’s the game from the Sthephen King book The Shining. It was called roque.

I wonder if that’s the game from the Sthephen King book The Shining. It was called roque.[/quote]

Anyone here ever play petanque? Or I think it is also called boules. I love that game but don’t know where to find the metal balls.

As far as the football goes, there’s the amateur stuff run by expats but there’s also the FIFA sanctioned Chinese Taipei Football Association that runs a division 1 league. But the best team is Taiwan Power Company and they’re based out of Kaohsuing. So unfortunately there’s not much action to see.

The national sport is shopping.

I wonder if that’s the game from the Sthephen King book The Shining. It was called roque.[/quote]

Anyone here ever play petanque? Or I think it is also called boules. I love that game but don’t know where to find the metal balls.

As far as the football goes, there’s the amateur stuff run by expats but there’s also the FIFA sanctioned Chinese Taipei Football Association that runs a division 1 league. But the best team is Taiwan Power Company and they’re based out of Kaohsuing. So unfortunately there’s not much action to see.[/quote]
Petanque equipment will definitely be available here if it isn’t already, as its one of the “sports” in the 2009 World Games being held in Kaohsiung. They had a competition just a few weeks ago as a pre-games warmup, and petanque was one of the featured events.
The pastis and cigarettes you can already get quite easily. I love that game too, in the right setting – under the shade trees on a patch of gravel on the Cote d’Azur seafront in the early evening, just when the heat is starting to go out of the day and the restaurant lights are coming on. Anywhere else and it seems just a little ridiculous to me – like playing football in Antartica. Or golf in the desert or something.

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Football is actually gaining ground as more and more football school jump up and it’s getting really popular with the kids.
There is actually a magazin which comes out bi-monthly and is dedicated to football in Taiwan (it’s bi-lingual too) and we (ok, ok, I just know about it because I am editing it for a friend, so all low budget but ya know… :slight_smile: ) get more and more content.
We also try to get the CTFA moving a bit but that’s hard. The “pro-level” league here plays on a strange kind of modus, so usually all the teams meet somewhere and play all games on one day at one location somehow.
The national team is playing once in a while and (if there is no Russian national circus or a flower exhibition in town) they play at the stadium right next to Yuanshan MRT station. They already droped out of the WC qualifications in the first qualifing stage.
The womens team is far better and is around place 30 in the world ranking.

The U16 and U19 woman national teams went to a qualifing tournament in Malaysia for the Asian Cup and qualified. I went down to Kaohsiong (or how ever it is spelled now) to talk to the three Brazilian Coaches the CTFA hired to get football going and also took photos down there before the headed off. The last edition of our magazin (actually a 8 pages newsletter) was mainly about this. Also about one girl which went to trials with a Japanese Pro team.

The next edition which should come out beginning of January will focus on kids and one young talent which is training and playing with a Spanish top team (for more get the edition, it’s free, PM me or contact me, we wanna spread it more and more… :smiley: ).

We also try to get a webpage up and going which should collect contacts and informations about football in Taiwan, for expats but even more important for locals. It’s a long way to go but hell some of us are stuck here anyways with our kids growing up here so we might as well try to do something. :wink:

Between, the local TV stations will show more and more football from now on as the Sports lottery is pushing for it. Maybe not the best ally but better than nothing. We will publish a table with the games shown on local TV in the next month too and of course also have addresses of pub’s and sportsbars where you can watch games.

So if anybody is interested, wants to help, has ideas or what so ever or just wants to get a free example of the magazine (and maybe wants to help us putting it into schools, and where ever else people might be interested) than just PM me or contact me anyhow else.

:notworthy:

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major sports for women in Taiwan = shopping and eating and seeing movies and general frickin around

major sports for men in Taiwan = eating and eating and general frickin around.

KTV is another sport

Maybe less then 1 percent of the populace does any real sport on a regular basis? But I think those that sport like hiking, badminton, tennis, basketball, baseball (in no particular odor here), swimming.
soccer.

One main sport not found on Taiwan (surprising considering most things American are found on Taiwan) is American Football.

I can’t believe no one mentioned ping pong (table tennis). I lurve the game, myself.

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I know me too (real tennis is way too much work) but its communist. Or its been used as in PingPong diplomacy before by the reds…so its all hush hush.

except the game is not hush hush, its really noisy

There are a few low-level Formula series and sports car drivers from Taiwan, and people seem to follow racing on TV (it’s on Star Sports all year round) so I’m surprised there has never been the demand for a track to be built. The only track that I’ve seen listed as existing in Taiwan is the older of two airfields in Taichung which is used as a temporary circuit. Away from the major cities, there’s sufficient space for a race track, not just the go-kart tracks you’ll find in a few places.

Given the way the Taiwanese speed so much, they need somewhere to get it out of their systems. :slight_smile: