I always assumed the National Sport was taking pictures of each other not paying any attention to the surroundings whilst having a plastic bag (optionally containing food, but not required) shoved up against your face and calling someone on your cell to tell them about it really loudly.
Baseball is okay but too difficult to enjoy unless itās well-organized.
Itās strange to me that basketball is so popular. The Taiwanese physique doesnāt lend itself to such a game. However, due to the lack of space and how cheap it is to pour cement, I guess basketball wins.
It would be great to see more small soccer fields built. I have some friends that are coaching and the kids like it a lot, but unfortunately they canāt stick with it for more than a year or so. The big math, Chinese, or science test takes precedence and they have to pay more efforts to studying.
[quote=āsandmanā]
Petanque equipment will definitely be available here if it isnāt already, as its one of the āsportsā 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.[/quote]
Sweet, Iāll check that out. I wonder if theyāll show this on TV? Actually petanque is also a game that could work well in Taiwan. All you really need is a big box filled with sand, oh wait, that would probably turn into a giant litterbox. n_n
Taiwan athlete Tommy Chen won this yearās 4 Deserts Race Series championship, one of the worldās most punishing tests of endurance, after finishing as runner-up Nov. 26 in The Last Desert Antarctica ultramarathon.
Chenās second place was enough to hand him overall victory in the competition comprised of four 250-km ultramarathonsāthe Atacama Crossing in Chile, Gobi March in mainland China, Sahara Race in Namibia, and Last Desert in the frozen southern continent. He also became the first Taiwan runner to claim the 4 Deserts Grand Slam title by completing all of the events in a single calendar year.
The ultramarathoner was leading this yearās series going into the final leg in Antarctica, having finished second in the Sahara Race in May, fifth in the Gobi March in June and first in the Atacama contest in October. He captured the championship by battling through gale-force blizzards and minus 20 C temperatures across the weeklong, six-stage contest in one of the worldās most unforgiving environments.
OK, thatās another point in the āagainst learning how to do dolphin kick off the wallā tally ā¦ it just wasnāt a thing yet when I was on a swim team, so I never learned. Once in a while Iāll try it, and, āOuchā, I wonāt try it again. I sometimes wonder if Iām giving up too quickly - your experience suggests Iām not!
I wish swim / bike events were more of a thing - Google tells me theyāre called Aquabikes?! Repeated knee strains prevent me from jogging, but I think itād be fun to train for a swim-bike event. Iād have no frigginā chance of being a serious competitor, but I donāt think Iād embarrass myself in my age group.
On the other hand, Iāll occasionally see videos of the starts of big swim races - like the Sun-Moon Lake one - and realize the crowd looks absolutely terrifying.
Research shows Taiwan as the country in the world with the least interest in football! An accomplishment in itself.
This is the consequence of being part of Japan and cultural codes of the era. Note though, that Taiwan was a decent, competitive side in Asia in the 50s due to many Hong Kong players. Then, sliding firmly under US influence, there was no chance of a football culture developing, but rather baseball (also a continuation from the Japanese period.)
The modern game is developing though, so the future looks better.
They really need to weed out match-fixing though, scandalously the national side got away clean with obvious fixing of a match vs Kuwait last year - nobody cares.
I would be all over that. Great fun and no knee pain. As for being a serious competitor, you probably would do well. The swimming level for those over 40 or so in Taiwan is not great, even at these races. They have aquathlons (?) in Taiwan (swim + run) but not the swim and bike combination.
The Sun Moon Lake swim is terrible. But triathlon swims are not that bad, as long as they donāt line people up by age where I get stuck close to the back but then have to swim around and over people for the entire distance. The fight at the beginning really isnāt that bad if youāre not scared of the water.
Remind me of that match fixing. Iām aware of the earlier one against Guam where the ref actually turned in an incorrect score card and no one said anything except one media guy.
The number of kids enrolled in football schools suggests the game must improve here. Plus all the kids with local mums and English etc. dads.
If you followed the abnormal odds market movements live, it was blatantly obvious something was amiss. And, some classic very naff defending with sloppy passes that just happened to get intercepted etc. 9-0 ft is embarrasing in itself for a national side, worse when the national side is involved in match-fixing (almost solely the domain of club sides, can only think of El Salvador and some African nations also with some history).