Taiwan Today

The Kaohsiung World Games 2009 are 's largest-scale sports event ever and also mark a pivotal point in the development of the southern city.

In June 2004, the International World Games Association (IWGA) officially named the southern port city of as host of the World Games 2009. By competing and winning against the cities of Cleveland and Houston in the United States, Birmingham in the United Kingdom and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Kaohsiung has shown its ambition and readiness to hold the international multi-sport event, which will be the largest-scale competition in the sports history of Taiwan. A record number of more than 4,000 athletes from some 80 countries around the world will take part in 26 official and five invitational sport programs across six broad categories: artistic and dance sports, ball sports, martial arts, precision sports, trend sports and strength sports. Five more sports, including croquet and the traditional Chinese arts of tai chi chuan and yuan ji dance, will be performed and may be included in future official or invitational sports programs.

The World Games were first held in the in . The 2009 games are not only a landmark event in 's sports scene, but also signal a pivotal stage of development for the host city. In a statement given to mark the beginning of the 365-day countdown to the games, Chen Chu, mayor of Kaohsiung City and the president of the World Games 2009 Kaohsiung Organizing Committee (KOC), said that the impact of hosting the World Games became increasingly visible during the construction and completion of two major venues, the main stadium and the Kaohsiung Arena, as well as in the development of transportation services--mainly Kaohsiung's Mass Rapid Transit systems. Liu Shyh-fang, KOC managing director and a former secretary-general of the Cabinet of the Republic of China's central government, says the architectural developments, increased public arts and improved road systems are bringing residents a new sense of pride in their city. These improvements are providing a subtle cultural force that is helping to move the port city toward a sports-oriented and recreational paradigm of urban development.

A quadrennial event taking place in the years following the Olympic Games, the World Games are organized and administered by the IWGA under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IWGA was founded in 1981 under Swiss law with its headquarters located in in the . The organization is a member of the General Association of International Sports Federations and is currently made up of 32 international sports federations that represent the sports eligible for inclusion in the official sports program of the World Games. Although a part of the Olympic Movement, the World Games feature sports not included in the Olympic Games. In 2000, the IOC and IWGA signed a memorandum of understanding to maintain and promote collaboration between the two organizations. Some sports, such as badminton, that used to be in the World Games program eventually made it as Olympic sports, while some others, such as softball, have been Olympic sports in the past.

Competition, Recreation

Liu Shyh-fang says that the World Games have their origin in many Western sports, but nonetheless some typical Asian sports such as dragon boat racing and sumo are also included. Minister of the Sports Affairs Council (SAC) Dana Tai says even though the games are a competitive event, they also have a recreational dimension. Some of the sports, such as fistball, fin swimming, skydiving and orienteering, are quite new in , where the general public and even people in the sports sector know little about them. Tai points out that promoting such sports locally must start from scratch with the formation of individual sports associations.

The minister also says that participation in the World Games has enhanced the competitive level and diversity of many sports in . Liu Shyh-fang points out that one can now see people play the World Games sport of boules, a French bowling game, in , for example. In recent years, Taiwanese athletes have performed quite well in certain fields, with the women's tug-of-war team winning the gold medal in the 2005 World Games and in doing so also recording one of the biggest surprise wins at the event held in . The team seeks to repeat the victory this year at home.

In addition, Taiwanese teams have done well in korfball, a game played much like basketball, with the word korf meaning "basket" in Dutch. At the 2008 World Youth Korfball Championship--seen as a warm-up event for the Kaohsiung World Games--the Taiwanese team came in second only to the team from the , where the mixed-gender sport originated. Dutch teams have won six consecutive gold medals since the sport was introduced at the 1985 World Games held in , while Belgian teams have won six consecutive silver medals and Taiwanese teams garnered two bronze medals in 1997 and 2001.

Liu is quite confident that the athletic performances will be of the highest level, with the intensity of competition at the World Games enthralling spectators. "Athletes will be doing their best to enter the official record books of their respective international sport associations," she says. Standards for other aspects of the competitions will be similarly high. "Strict regulations are adopted for the gymnastics competition, for example, such as judges and contestants not staying in the same hotel and not even going into the contest venue through the same entrance," she says. Divided into five disciplines of rhythmic, aerobics, acrobatics, tumbling and trampoline, gymnastics is a popular sport with local audiences, who are also fans of dance sports including the standard, Latin American and rock-and-roll division events.

Perhaps the most attention is likely to be directed at the opening and closing ceremonies, which have been coordinated and will be supervised by the 2009 World Games artistic director Tchen Yu-chiou, chairwoman of the board of the National Theater and Concert Hall. A Paris-trained pianist and former minister of the Council for Cultural Affairs, Tchen has followed the theme of "homegrown fashion" for the event, presenting Taiwan's natural and cultural motifs through high-tech staging, music and lighting in a spectacle meant for all the world to see, on site and on the air. "It's a good time to think through what we can call our own and what can be shown at an international standard," she says.

Cultural Showcase

In order to show 's cultural diversity, the opening ceremony has been designed to display historical and cultural symbols from indigenous and Han peoples such as the folk tradition of temple festivals. Scheduled among other items in the closing ceremony will be a selection of Taiwanese pop music, a major creative force in the Asian entertainment sector. Chen Sheng and Wu Bai, who created dynamic singing careers as they helped boost the New Taiwanese Songs movement in the early 1990s, have been invited to sing in Holo, Hakka and Mandarin. 's history as an international port city will also feature in both ceremonies. Moreover, most of the performing groups are local to and neighboring regions and have been chosen to convey a distinctly local flavor to the events.

Liu points out that, given 's limited international presence, the World Games represent a unique opportunity to perform on the world stage, explaining that the games are like a message from southern spreading out around the globe. "On our own home soil, we can put our best foot forward and extend our warm friendship to people from all over the world," she says.

SAC Minister Dana Tai notes that the preparatory efforts to host the World Games involved wide-ranging considerations and measures including medical care, security, customs affairs, possible risks of terrorism and epidemics and so on. The SAC has played a coordinating and integrating role among different government departments at the national level as the event could not possibly rely on local government resources only. "We're all learning by doing in this unprecedented case," the minister says. She believes that the legacies of hosting the World Games as well as the Deaflympics in later in the year will not only include construction of the new stadiums, but also the professional experience staff members will gain. These attributes will be very helpful for 's ongoing bids for the World University Games and the East Asian Games, she says. "A bid for the Olympic Games is not feasible right now, but it can be a long-term goal," she adds.

The SAC minister is working on a project to connect the brand-new World Games main stadium, located in 's Zuoying District, and the nearby by creating a national sports park that could also include a sports museum. Tai, a former track and field competitor, was among the first athletes to live and train at the center, which was established in 1975 for athletes participating in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

The Zuoying center is quite old now and is in urgent need of comprehensive renovation, with Tai saying that the proposed sports park in would include the functions of education, training, leisure and tourism. She says the park would be an extension of the open-end design of the World Games stadium, which holds out its long "arms" in welcome to athletes from around the world and will continue to entertain visitors long after the games end. "Athletic competition seems detached from ordinary life sometimes," Tai says. "We'd like to see sports become an everyday passion for all people."

"The main stadium is the brightest World Games star," says Liu Shyh-fang, managing director of the World Games 2009 Kaohsiung Organizing Committee. Kaohsiung City Mayor Chen Chu is also very proud of this architectural masterpiece, saying she believes that the "Flying Dragon"--the nickname for the National Stadium of the Sports Affairs Council of the Executive Yuan--surpasses the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium in .

Located in northern Kao-hsiung's Zuoying District, the construction of the stadium started with an international design competition in 2005. A jury of 13 scholars and architects from , , the , the and the selected the design by Japanese architect Toyo Ito from five bids tendered for the project. One of the world's most influential designers of innovative conceptual structures, Ito has won numerous prestigious prizes at home and abroad including the Architecture Institute of Japan award in 1986 and the Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement from the International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2002. Ito also won the design contest for the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House in central , where construction was begun in January 2008.

Near the World Games Station of the Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit system, the stadium's open-air, horseshoe-shaped structure meanders across 19 hectares of parklands. Unlike regular stadiums, which are fully enclosed, the southern end of the stadium is open so as to provide the practical benefits of natural ventilation on the one hand and on the other act as a symbol of welcome, warmly inviting people into the city sports park with architectural magnificence. Ito's design was partly inspired by the architect's visit to the crowded, lively Liuho Night Market in downtown . The market's feel of vitality and dynamism is reflected in the floating steel structure of the roof, which is made up of continuous spirals.

One of the most difficult parts of construction for the project was to cover the expansive, curved roof with around 9,000 solar panels, which can generate an estimated 1.1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, making it one of the world's largest solar energy applications for a stadium. The solar energy will provide most of the power required for the stadium's operation and any surplus energy will be sold to Taiwan Power Company. A role model of green construction, the stadium's building materials were all locally produced, including steel from China Steel Corp., which has headquarters located in southern .

The stadium, with a capacity of 40,000 seats, has been built to comply with the specifications of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) for a venue of sports events at the highest level. It also offers 's first soccer field to meet FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) standards. In addition to the World Games' opening and closing ceremonies, the main stadium will host the rugby and flying disc competitions.

On May 20 this year, a concert was held in the stadium to mark its inauguration. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra was invited to play a repertoire that included Beethoven's Ode to Joy and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, which is famous for its use of cannon fire as part of the work. The choral part featured the Vienna State Opera Choir and voices from several Taiwanese groups such as the National Experimental Chorus and the Kaohsiung Medical University Singers. The concert also served as a test run for the World Games opening ceremony on July 16, this year.

--Pat Gao

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com