Chinese Taipei Offers Cash Prize for Olympic Medals

(ATR) The Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee announced rewards of $406,146 to gold medal winning Olympians in London.

Thomas Tsai, president of thethe CTOC reveals to Around the Rings that the committee will also offer "other prize money each year until they are retried," to medalists.

Chinese Taipei athletes have qualified for archery, athletics, badminton, cycling, fencing, sailing, shooting, table tennis, taekwondo and weightlifting, asserted that shooting, taekwondo and weightlifting are their advantage sports.

"We achieved the breakthrough of winning Olympic gold in 2004 with our taekwondo athletes claiming two golds," Tsai told ATR. "We also won medals at table tennis, arching, archery and weightlifting which we still have some chances to win medals this year and even fight for gold medals."

Chinese Taipei first participated in the Olympic Games in 1932 as China, and since the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics as Chinese Taipei. The country has won a total of 17 medals.

In Athens, Chinese Taipei claimed 5 medals including 2 golds finishing 31st in the medal tally. However, the team claimed only 4 bronze medals in Beijing four years ago finishing 79th.

Tsai claimed that taekwondo is the sport with the best chances for a gold medal.

"We are expecting to win gold at Olympic Games again,and taekwondo has our best hope," Tsai said.

"Meanwhile, we plan to have some breakthroughs at weightlifting and archery."

Shu Chun Yang, the silver medalist at Taekwondo World Championships last year in the 49 kg weight division would appear to be the strongest competitor heading into the Games.

"I will be fighting for myself inLondon," Yang told ATR.

"What I want to do is to challenge myself after going through lots of things. I hope that I could preform well in London. I will try to enjoy every moment."

Yang is sometimes controversial, being disqualified in her opening bout at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou for apparently wearing extra electronic sensors in her socks. Then the World Taekwondo Federation banned her from competition for three months because she staged a sit-down protest and refused to leave the mat following her disqualification.

She was planning to retire from the sports after the dispute but she changed her mind to continue her Olympic dream.

Unlike Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee will only use homegrown talent at the London Olympics.

"We are not planning to introduce some mainland athletes to improve our result," said Tsai.

"We used to have Chen Jing representing us to compete at Olympic Games and reached some good results. However she didn't stay to help with local sports' development after retirement. Thus we expect to find more athletes from local schools."

The first table tennis women single gold medalist in Seoul played for Chinese Taipei team at both the Atlanta and Sydney Games winning a silver and bronze respectively. However, she moved back to mainland China when she retired from sports.

Tsai still expect to have more communication with mainland China in sports.

"Some basketball players now are playing at CBA (Chinese Basketball League), and we have lots of baseball coaches who go to mainland China to promote this sport. Lots of our individual sports always will go to China to train and communicate," Tsai said.

"We hope that we can have more cooperation and communication with mainland in future," He added.

Written and Reported in Taipei by Tencent's Norman Li and Wang Yiwei.

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