Thursday, January 30, 2014

Davis Cup vs. India

Taiwan takes on India this weekend in the first round of Group I play at Indore, India. As first round play is always around Chinese New Years, Taiwan doesn't have its A team for this round. Lu Yen-Hsun is taking time off at home in Taiwan for the holidays while Jimmy Wang is busy at a challenger in Panama. Instead, Yang Tsung-Hua, Chen Ti, Peng Hsien-Yen, and Lee Hsin-Han will represent the Taiwanese contingent.

India will be the overwhelming favorites with two top 200 single players (Somdev Devvarman and Yuki Bhambri) and a top 15 doubles player (Rohan Bopanna). There's a strong chance India will go 5-0 this weekend.

Taiwan avoided relegation last year by beating Indonesia.

I do feel like Taiwan should stay in Group I this year as on paper they're stronger than Korea and New Zealand.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Four Continents

The Four Continents Figure skating championships took place in Taipei this past weekend. Taiwanese American Crystal Kiang took 20th. Here is her short program at around 8:25

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NTW1Gcahnk

No falls but unfortunately two of her jumps were landed double footed. Clean double axle at the end and an interesting spinning position at around 11:51 highlighted the second of half of the short program.

Jui-Shu Chen, Jordan Ju, and Chih-I Tsao represented the Taiwanese men. The placed 25th, 22nd, and 18th respectively.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Te-An Lien qualifies!!!

Remember how last year I said I wanted Luger Lien Te-An to qualify for the 2014 Sochi Olympics?

Well he has! At the 11th hour he has qualified to take part in the Olympic Games two weeks from now. After Slovenia and United Kingdom decided not to use their qualification quota, their spots were reallocated with Taiwan getting one of those spots!

Lien Te-An joins two other Taiwanese athletes at these games. ( More about them later)  This will be the biggest Taiwanese team since 2002.

As Lien Te-An is still a young athlete hopefully this Olympic experience will be the first of a couple more in his career!