Taiwan has joined many other countries who are celebrating their teams victories at the Paris Olympics. Members of Taiwanese community in Lagos, according to a statement recently rolled out carpets to rejoice over the performance of the country’s team at the Paris Olympics.
The country’s team took home two gold and five bronze medals, ranking 35th out of the 206 participating nations.
Speaking on behalf of the community, Representative and Chief of Taiwan Mission in Nigeria, Andy Yih-Ping Liu, in the statement said the Tawanese in Nigeria were elated that Boxer Lin Yu-ting and “Taiwan’s Fastest Man” Yang Chun-han were the flag bearers at last Sunday’s closing ceremonies for the Paris Olympics, which saw Taiwan winning seven medals.
According to Liu, the members of the team, through their performance, showed the time-tested Tawanese spirit.
“We are very happy here with their performance and we hope our team to the next Los Angeles Olympic will also make our country and the people proud,” the envoy said.
The two gold medals tied Taiwan’s record for the most gold medals, while the total medal haul was Team Taiwan’s second-most. The nation won 12 medals in Tokyo.
The gold medals, according to the statement were won by the men’s badminton duo of Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin and Lin in the women’s boxing 57kg weight class. Kuo Hsing-chun could not repeat her gold medal performance from Tokyo due to injuries and settled for the bronze in the women’s 59kg weightlifting competition, but was the first Taiwanese to medal in three straight Olympics.
Boxer Chen Nien-chin also competing in her third Olympics, took bronze in the women’s 66kg class. Gymnast Tang Chia-hung captured the bronze in the men’s horizontal bar.
Wu Shih-yi boxed her way to bronze in the women’s 60kg weight class. Sharpshooter Lee Meng-yuan bagged Taiwan’s first medal, a bronze, in the men’s skeet event.
Lin served as the female flag bearer for Team Taiwan at the closing ceremony on Sunday evening. Yang was the male representative.
The statement further said that also present were women’s table tennis player Cheng Yi-ching and the Taiwan table tennis coach, Zheng Jiaqi; break-dancer Sun Chen and his coach, Su Chih-peng; track athlete, Peng Ming-yang; and track coaches, Tseng Hsiao-sheng and Tsai I-ta per CNA.
The climax of the ceremony, according to reports, was when actor Tom Cruise rappelled into the Stade de France from the roof, ran up to the stage, and grabbed the Olympic flag from Simone Biles and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
As Tom Cruise left the stage, he affixed the flag to the back of a motorcycle and rode out of the stadium onto a plane before cutting to a video of him skydiving over Los Angeles and delivering the flag to the host city of the 2028 Olympics.
