President Ma Ying-jeou met on the morning of November 29 with members of the Chinese Taipei team participating in the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games who won medals there. The Chinese Taipei team won a total of 13 gold medals, 16 silvers, and 38 bronzes, and the president congratulated the athletes for their outstanding performance.
In remarks to the gathering, President Ma noted that Taiwan ranked seventh in the number of gold medals won at this year's Asian Games among the 45 competing nations, and fifth in the total medal count. This was a big improvement over the 2006 Asian Games in Doha (where the Chinese Taipei contingent ranked tenth with 9 golds, 10 silvers, and 27 bronzes), and represented Taiwan's best performance since winning 19 gold medals in Bangkok in 1998. Athletes from Taiwan won medals in billiards, tennis, soft tennis, roller sports, skating, taekwondo, and cycling. The medal count demonstrates the results of the athletes' hard work and training, he said.
Regarding the unfair treatment of a Taiwan athlete, Ms. Yang Shu-chun, in the taekwondo event, President Ma reiterated the government's resolute stance that it will stand up for the interests of our athletes and the nation, and all unfounded accusations are categorically rejected prior to the conclusion of an investigation. The president furthermore stated that when the incident occurred on November 17, Sports Affairs Council Minister Tai Hsia-ling immediately protested the disqualification at the games venue, while the president himself directed the Presidential Office spokesman to deliver a statement asking all related agencies to call on the host to handle the matter fairly, in a manner that complies with the law and comports with common sense. President Ma pointed out that he has spoken out on the matter five times in his capacity as head of state to show the government's firm intention to pursue the issue to a satisfactory conclusion. However, he also said that before all details are clear, the government had to be tempered in its response in order to prevent impacting the interests of other competing athletes. The appropriate action taken and the support provided by the public ultimately enabled two other athletes from Taiwan to win gold in the taekwondo ring, which proves that our course of action has been the right one, he said.
President Ma also praised Ms. Yang for publicly calling on her fellow citizens not to direct their anger at the Korean people and not to blow the incident out of proportion or politicize it. The president said Yang showed herself with these remarks to be a very classy individual. President Ma reiterated the writing in Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by Harvard University Medical School's Dr. John J. Ratey, who has observed that athletes are by no means "all brawn and no brains" as is sometimes said; to the contrary, Dr. Ratey notes that people become more mature and reasonable as the result of athletic activity. The president called on athletes to embrace the ideals of sportsmanship and fair competition, so that every contest will be a success whether one wins or loses.
President Ma stated that "we must be a healthy populace if we are to have a healthy nation." He hopes that advocating athletics will gradually lead to better training of athletes, health care, and better venues for sports. The Sports Affairs Council, he said, has budgeted funds to establish 50 sports centers and 20 sports parks throughout Taiwan to provide an improved and universally accessible infrastructure to encourage the public to engage in exercise. The government needs to maintain a dual focus on both recreational and competitive sports, so that the general public will develop a solid grasp of the fundamentals and those in the competitive sports world will have more opportunities to scout out people with athletic potential, he said.
Lastly, the president said he hopes that the athletes will continue to work hard in preparation for next year's Summer Universiade in Shenzhen and the 2012 Olympics in London, so as to win more distinction for the nation.
The athletes were accompanied to the Presidential Office in the morning by Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee President Thomas W. Tsai, Minister without Portfolio Ovid J.L. Tzeng, and Sports Affairs Council Minister Tai Hsia-ling to meet President Ma.