Athletes representing Taiwan at the Paris Olympics in boxing and team archery were unfortunately eliminated, but table tennis players Kao Cheng-jui (高承睿) and Cheng I-ching (鄭怡靜) were able to advance to the top 16.
Kao won his first men’s singles match against Romanian player Eduard Ionescu on Monday evening in Paris, defeating his opponent 4:1. Cheng, who is the world’s 12th-ranked female table tennis player, squared up with Romanian player Elizabeta Samara that same evening; after an intense match lasting six games, Cheng won by 4:2.
Taiwanese boxer Lai Chu-en (賴主恩), who first competed in the games in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 20, was able to qualify for the Olympics once again this year. However, he found himself up against a tough opponent in the first round, Kazakh boxer Bazarbay Uulu Mukhammedsabyr, and lost 2:3.
As for Taiwan’s men’s archery team, who took home the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics, they will miss the chance to step on the podium again this year in Paris. They lost 1:5 against the Chinese men’s archery team. Although neither the men’s nor women’s archery teams could move forward, Tang Chih-chun (湯智鈞) and Lei Chien-ying (雷千瑩) remain hopeful about achieving good results in the mixed team archery event.