Taiwan Today

Ku Chin-shui, a 23-year-old decathlonist, raising his head, gazes at the towering crossbar about 45 meters away. He holds his breath, then begins his run. His fiberglass vaulting pole roughly parallels the ground, bobbing with the runner's steps. Pacing rhythmically to the rising pole (one end firmly planted in a reception box sunk below ground level at the base of the uprights), he leaves the ground, shooting his body into the air until he is almost doing a handstand. He twists as he approaches the bar and arches over, feet first and face down. The pole is released just before the flyover and given a push backward to prevent its knocking off the bar. The athlete then lands on his back on a padded medium.

A moment later, he rises, picking up the abandoned pole and returning to the starting point. Then, he repeats the whole routine, oblivious to whatever is happening around.

Halfway down the 400-meter oval track, Wu Ching-chin, the island's top 110-meter hurdler, concentrates on his first leap. His tank top is drenched with sweat. Compared with the Fourth Asian Cup record, 14.22 s., his 14.24 s. is still lagging.

A stone's throwaway, marathoners Chen Chang-min and Kao Yueh-mei and high jumper Lin Chin-chian are warming up in the blazing sunshine, preparing for afternoon practice.

With less than a year to go before the 1984 Summer Olympics, the Republic of China's best are struggling on the road to Los Angeles, mindful of the absences of ROC teams both at Moscow 1980 and Montreal 1976.

Cheng Yin-chieh, deputy chief for training of the ROC Amateur Sports Fed­eration (ASF), talked about AFS' role in the selection and training programs: "The myriad of competition events re­sults in a division of labor. The initial stage is mainly at the free disposal of indi­vidual, independent sports associations. Each association sets its own criteria, designs its own training routines. AFS, joining hands with the Chinese-Taipei Olympic Committee, will only involve itself in the final selections and last-stage training."

Track and field ranks No.1 in terms of numbers, both in trainees and events, among all sports associations.

Veteran athlete Chi Cheng, known as the Flying Antelope and now general-secretary of the Chinese-Taipei Track and Field Association, gave this rundown on the current program: "The first-stage training program started from 1982 summer, covering about 60 national champions. And we now have the Tso­xing Training Center, our largest training base outside the three centers at Taipei, Taichung, and Kuanhsi.

"The approaching Fourth Annual Taiwan Area Games and Kuwait's Asian Cup Championships are to be counted as the second test. We have set up subjec­tive selection criteria for qualifying the athletes who will become the candidates for our national delegation."

Abundant international experience, Chi believes, holds the key to decreasing competition stage-fright. Accordingly, the association has hunted down every chance to participate in international games. Recently at Heisinki, Finland, eleven of the ROC's most outstanding runners and jumpers faced their first major pre-Olympic test: the First World Track and Field Championships. The subsequent Cologne and Berlin contests will, no doubt, broaden their skills and help season them.

Chi Cheng, bronze medal winner for the 80-meter hurdles at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, was recently honored by the United States Sports Academy for her outstanding contributions to the promotion of sports. She conceded that the ROC still has a long way to go in com­parison with the major Western sports powers. However, she noted that the Association has adopted long-term culti­vation programs, including discovery processes to identify physically gifted youngsters, and systematic training plans. Besides, she said, outstanding athletes as well as coaches are being sent abroad for intensive, short-term ad­vanced study. Last year, coaches Su Wen-ho and Tim Farrington, an enthu­siastic American recruited by Chi Cheng, completed such courses at Cali­fornia's Mt. San Antonio College.

"Sports are an undertaking for hundreds and even thousands of years. We aim not only at next year's Olympics, but at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and the many more to come," Chi said.

Inside the Lung Chiang Street gymnasium in Taipei, 15-year-old Chen Pei-wen strains at the balance beam, one of four exercise disciplines incorporated in the women's gymnastic competitions —the other three are the uneven parallel bars, the vaulting horse, and floor exercises.

As she stands poised on the wooden beam -a 4-in. deep bar of spruce, 16 ½ft. long, 4 ft. above the padded flooring-the palms of her hands shine white with gymnast's chalk-as white as her close-filling sports costume. Then she is airborne: a back flip, and a graceful land­ing on the bar. In another moment, she curves backward again; then a second blind flip to a smooth landing-a bird alighting.

Chen and five other girls passed the second test in June and are now proceeding with the second-stage plan. Four coaches guide their daily 4-hour routines.

Chang Chin-tse, 17-year-old top hand at the vaulting horse and one of the four male contenders, described their daily ordeal: "From 6:30-8:30 a.m., we concentrate on prescribed exercises that all competitors must perform. After 9 a.m., we center on optional exercises for two hours. The latter event is judged solely on its execution-the form of the gymnast, the fluency of the performance, the correctness of the exercise, and the beauty of execution when combining the component parts of the exercise. All our efforts aim at the perfection of our per­formance." When schools reopen after the summer vacation, their practice hours will be moved to afternoon or evening, in the wake of academic responsibilities.

Their chief coach, Wang Ping-yi noted, "Gymnastic sports involve sys­tematic and usually rhythmic exercises -a performance of strength, suppleness, agility, coordination, and body control. Such exercises are most suited to Oriental athletes, considering their (usual slightness) in build."

An experienced stationary-rings competitor in Red China before he came to Taiwan in 1981, Wang was a national delegate for the Communist regime. That particular experience always touches off a question: What is the dif­ference in training methods in the Republic of China and on the mainland? Wang shrugged, "My personal impres­sion is that training is a little too free here. Athletes here make their own choices. On the mainland, it's rigid pro­fessional training, not at all concerned with individual athlete's desires."

Lin Min-san, general-secretary of the swimming association, described the training program for the water sports: "Our 49 national champions began their first-stage training in the summer of 1982 at four training locales: Keelung, Taipei, Chiayi, and Hsinying. From early July to the end of August, all of them were assembled at Tsoying for uniformed training under the guidance of foreign experts. Their achievements in the Annual Taiwan Games in November will be counted as a second selection test. Qualified candidates will be turned over to ASF for last-stage training and final selections."

Jamaica and Kenya, originally unknown in the international sports world, made up their minds ten years ago to go after their dreams—winning gold medals at the Olympics. Jamaica chose sprinting, Kenya long-distance running. Today, their athletes have won world applause and forced other competitors to take them seriously.

Lines from the Four Books sum it up: "What kind of man was Shun (a legendary perfect ruler of ancient China)? And what kind of man am I? Anyone who can make an effort can be like that." The ROC, like Jamaica and Kenya before, is determined to go for the gold, in 1984 and into the future.