Taiwan Today

Taiwan’s taekwondo team aims for gold at the London Olympics.

On an ordinary weekday morning inside a gym at the National Sports Training Center in Kaohsiung City, southern Taiwan, 25 of the country’s top taekwondo athletes are working through their morning training session of seemingly endless kicks and blocks. They are repeatedly reminded by the coaches of the details they need to pay attention to in preparation for the upcoming Olympic Games and a team of experts records their progress. The coaches are not exactly whispering and the training is exhausting, but the morale of the young athletes stays high. “You have to beat yourself before you can beat others,” head coach Song Jing-hong (宋景宏) says to his athletes, “and you can only be beaten after you’ve already beaten yourself.”

Three of these young athletes—Yang Shu-chun (楊淑君), Tseng Li-cheng (曾櫟騁) and Wei Chen-yang (魏辰洋)—will soon be among those testing their technique and strength at the summer games in London, where they will represent Taiwan. The team will compete under the name Chinese Taipei. Yang now is ranked fourth in the women’s under-49 kilogram division by the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), while Tseng ranks second in the women’s under-57 kilogram division and Wei third in the men’s under-58 kilogram division. All three are veteran athletes who have won a number of medals for Taiwan in international taekwondo events, though the London matches will be Tseng and Wei’s Olympic debut. Yang represented Taiwan at the Beijing games in 2008.

Despite the many honors they have won at international events, the pressure has been building as the competition in London approaches. Tseng notes that it is normal to feel stress before any event, but the Olympics are a little different. “An Olympic medal is the highest goal for athletes in all sports,” she says. “I’m 26, which is quite old in this sport, so this is likely my last shot at reaching that goal.” Sometimes, such nervous energy can be very helpful in pushing an athlete beyond their normal limit, but it can also have a negative impact on an athlete’s performance if it is not handled properly.

Working On the Mental Game

Song notes that part of the stress can come from an athlete’s lack of self-confidence when called on to face certain rivals. He explains that at the top level of a sport, athletes usually face the same rivals at various competitions. Losing once to a rival can spook an athlete and therefore negatively influence performance the next time he or she must face the same opponent. In such cases, coaches and athletes study the rival’s each and every move, come up with strategies to counter the opponent and practice them thoroughly. “The key here is not whether a strategy will work, but to ‘hypnotize’ the athlete to believe that it will work,” Song says. “When the confidence is built, the technique will follow, as this is as much a mental game as it is physical.”

Pressure also comes from the high hopes of the government. Song notes that there are actually other taekwondo events where the competition is even stronger than the Olympic Games, but the government tends to put more resources and weight on the Olympics. The reward for an Olympic gold medal, for example, is NT$12 million (US$400,000), while that for the World Taekwondo Championships, which is considered the sport’s toughest event, is only NT$1.5 million (US$50,000). “With all that investment, there are naturally hopes of seeing some returns,” Song says.

Still, there are good reasons for the high expectations of taekwondo athletes. For one thing, Taiwan has won more Olympic medals in the sport than in any other. Taiwanese athletes grabbed two gold and three bronze medals at the 1988 Seoul games and three gold and two bronze medals at the 1992 Barcelona games, when taekwondo was still a demonstration sport. Since taekwondo was made an official Olympic sport at the Sydney games in 2000, Taiwan has taken two bronzes in Sydney, two golds and a silver in Athens in 2004 and two bronzes in Beijing in 2008. The two gold medals won by Chen Shih-hsin (陳詩欣) and Chu Mu-yen (朱木炎) in 2004 are the only official Olympic gold medals Taiwan has won.

Starting from the Marines

Liu Ching-wen (劉慶文), who was head coach of the national team in 2004 and is still a member of its coaching staff, notes that one of the country’s biggest strengths lies in the solid basic training athletes receive from a very early age, a result of the fact that taekwondo has been practiced in Taiwan for a much longer time than in most other countries. Taekwondo was introduced in Taiwan through the military after then Minister of Defense Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) visited South Korea in 1966. Impressed by the taekwondo demonstrations he saw by South Korean military personnel, Chiang wanted to include the martial art as part of close-quarters combat training in Taiwan. South Korean instructors were invited to the island to coach and Taiwan’s first taekwondo school was set up by the Marine Corps in 1967, although the sport was known as juquan in the military. Liu, who was trained as a taekwondo instructor when he joined the marines in 1969, recalls that only three out of 120 trainees made it to become instructors. “It was all Spartan training and injury was part of daily life,” Liu says. “There was actually an ambulance waiting outside the gym.” Initially for the marines only, juquan was later added to the training programs for the army, navy and the police force.

Discharged military personnel took home what they had learned in the service. In 1969, the first private taekwondo school was established in Kaohsiung and more were set up around Taiwan in the following year. To promote the sport, the Republic of China Taekwondo Association (now Chinese Taipei Taekwondo Association) was founded in 1973. In addition to holding competitions and establishing an evaluation system, the association brought in South Korean instructors to help teach taekwondo, and, backed by strong government support, the martial art soon worked its way into society. Many grade schools adopted the sport as an extracurricular activity, clubs sprang up at universities and taekwondo was designated as a required course at all sports colleges and departments.

Getting young boys and girls interested in the sport obviously takes an approach different from that of training combatants. The basic philosophy, however, is the same. “Discipline is the most important thing,” Song says, “or else I’d be training a bunch of skillful fighters instead of taekwondo athletes.” Song recalls that when he started his school in 1981 in Shulin District, New Taipei City, it was already fairly common for children to learn taekwondo. The sport became really popular, though, after the national team’s outstanding performance at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Although there are no official statistics, the Chinese Taipei Taekwondo Association estimates that there are about 700 schools and clubs around the island, with more than 1 million active practitioners of the sport.

The training methods have also improved. Liu points out that sports science was ignored by many in Taiwan’s sports circle up until the late 1990s, when coaches and athletes began to realize the key role it could play in helping athletes both physically and mentally. Systematic weight training programs, for example, help build athletes’ strength without injury. Sports psychologists help athletes maintain a balanced mental outlook so that they can develop to their full potential.

Meanwhile, local taekwondo coaches are finding their hunt for talent is getting harder and harder. For one thing, social attitudes have long marginalized the importance of sports in Taiwan. Song explains that while many parents send their elementary-school-aged children to learn taekwondo for exercise, most see it as an activity that should be dropped as the children grow up and their workload at school becomes heavier. “In Taiwan, academic achievement still means a better chance in the job market,” he says. “Sports have never been a wise career choice.”

Another reason is Taiwan’s low birthrate. In the days when parents had many children, one child might be permitted to pursue a sports career, but today, having only one or two children is common. As such, each child faces higher expectations to seek a prestigious or well-paid career, neither of which can be said of sports jobs.

When coaches do see some especially gifted young boys or girls who are also interested in the sport, they spend a lot of time communicating with the parents on things like what schools their children could enter with a specialty in taekwondo, what professional and academic training they could receive in those schools and, above all, what their children could do after retiring from competition in the sport. “Basically, we need to have a plan laid out for the parents,” Song says.

Reason for Concern

Still, parents have reason for concern, as Taiwan has yet to become an ideal environment for the development of taekwondo or most other sports. Song concedes that the country’s low birthrate also makes things difficult because fewer children mean fewer coaching jobs. “Athletes devote everything to their sport and usually don’t think too much about the future until they are too old,” says 25-year-old retired taekwondo athlete Wu Jia-chi (吳嘉琪), who was the practice partner of 2004 Olympic gold medalist Chen Shih-hsin at the National Sports Training Center. “In fact, there aren’t a lot of choices except for coaching or becoming a school PE teacher.”

Wu started learning taekwondo when she was a junior high school student, but never made it to the national team. She retired from the sport seven years ago when she married Omid Gholamzadeh, an Asian Games taekwondo gold medalist from Iran, who is currently a guest coach for Taiwan’s national team. Wu says that the development of taekwondo in Iran and Taiwan has been similar. The sport was introduced to both countries at about the same time, started from the military and then expanded to the general population, and both countries have been performing well in competitions. The major difference is that taekwondo is already a professional sport in Iran, but not in Taiwan. “Omid is 30 and still has some life as an active athlete, thanks to Iran’s professional taekwondo league,” Wu says. “Professionalization provides athletes with the chance to stay in their sports longer and frees them from financial worries when they retire.” Wu came out of retirement to compete in the women’s professional league in Iran when she lived there with her husband for several years, but retired again when she became a mother.

The two countries’ outstanding performance in taekwondo owes much to an early start, but competitors from other countries, especially Western athletes, have been making gains since the martial art became an official Olympic sport. Head coach Song Jing-hong notes that taekwondo is a sport that emphasizes strikes with the feet rather than the hands, as the longer reach and greater power of the legs offer superior ability to disable an opponent while protecting the practitioner from being struck. Western athletes, who are usually taller than Asian competitors and therefore have longer legs, have a natural advantage and are catching up in the sport.

In the world of taekwondo, the difference between winning and losing is often one kick that takes less than a second to execute. But coaches and athletes know that the outcome of a split-second blow is decided by a combination of technique, mental strength and physical power rather than just the length of a leg. So back at the National Sports Training Center on an ordinary afternoon, Taiwan’s top taekwondo athletes continue the day’s training with a routine weightlifting program. The workout is tough, as their coaches demand they push themselves beyond their normal levels of endurance, but the enthusiasm stays high. “I’ve been doing this for 17 years,” Tseng Li-cheng says. And with the Olympics in mind, she asks her training partner to add another pound to the weight.

Write to Jim Hwang at cyhuang03@mofa.gov.tw