Left field

World Games: Hidden gold for those who look, laugh

Reporters covering matches between the planet’s top tug-of-war teams at the 2009 World Games in Taiwan this past week would work from the press box of a middle school gymnasium cooled by ceiling fans and run by six volunteers with nothing to do but make sure the computer lines worked.

The actual battleground was the school’s field; a sell-out crowd of about 300 sat on the school’s bleachers after paying just $3 per ticket. International World Games Association officials watched from a lean-to on the grass.

Across town at a wooded art museum campus, the venue for world-class orienteering, reporters could get so close to competitors that one had to take special care to avoid the scribes while sprinting for hidden objects. Fans sat on benches next to the sweaty contestants, close enough to ask questions or take sharp photos of the medal ceremony.

These are snapshots from the 2009 World Games, a quadrennial sub-Olympic event that unites 31 sports that lack global appeal today but have a shot at actual Olympic admission as early as 2016.

It’s no small deal for Kaohsiung, the obscure Taiwan industrial city that has played up the July 16-26 event over the past year to vie for international attention.

But because most of the sports — korfball or flying disc, for example — are still struggling to make a mark in everyday conversation, nevermind the Olympics, the World Games was a picnic compared to other international sporting events, which are usually as packed and heavily controlled as big-name concerts. (more…)

World Games proves a tough sell for Taiwan

After the globe giggled at Athens in 2004 for letting swathes of Olympics seats go empty, organisers of the far more obscure 2009 World Games in equally obscure Taiwan are doing whatever it takes to pack the venues for such unlikely events as billiards and beach handball. Tug-of-war, anyone?

Whatever it takes, in this case, includes selling seats to China. World Games host city Mayor Chen Chu travelled there on Thursday for a four-day visit, intending to sell the 90 percent of events tickets that are unclaimed so far before the curtain goes up on July 16.

Chen is a leading figure in a Taiwan opposition party that wants formal independence for self-ruled Taiwan, which mighty Beijing claims as its own for historical reasons and has threatened to take by force.

But she’s also “realistic and pragmatic,” to quote Taiwan political scientist Andrew Yang. She knows Beijing can use its authoritarian rule to send hordes of travel-hungry Chinese tourists to the World Games, quickly quashing any Athens-style absenteeism.

“You can’t ignore such a large group of the world’s public, and her polls have shown that some people in her city support more contact with China,” said Kou Chien-wen, a politics professor in Taipei.

Chen plans to market the 300,000 World Games tickets and her normally uneventful city Kaohsiung to countries besides China, but who else will have the power or interest in packing her stadiums?

PHOTO: Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu (L) presents an invitation of the 2009 World Games to her Beijing counterpart Guo Jinlong during their meeting in Beijing May 21, 2009. REUTERS/China Daily

World Games bring spotlight to southern Taiwan

2008 was undoubtedly China’s year in the limelight, thanks to the Beijing Olympics. But this year, China’s longtime political and diplomatic rival Taiwan gets the World Games

And it’s not Taiwan’s frenetic, fashionable capital Taipei which will be hosting the event. Instead, the island’s second largest city and one of the world’s busiest ports, Kaohsiung, will be home to the 16-26 July extravaganza.

The World Games, held under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee, is for some of the sports which don’t make the cut for the Olympics. That includes billiards, tug of war, sumo, squash, water skiing and even life saving.

“For the spectators, at the venues as well as in front of TV sets, the particular fascinations of The World Games are found in watching these athletes compete in sports of a kaleidoscopic variety that is without match in the entire Olympic Movement,” is how the organisation describes the event.

What I have found most fascinating is the preparations Kaohsiung has been making for the Games, particularly as I covered the Beijing Olympics and the run-up to it.

Beijing was beset by problems, all well-documented, including worries over pollution, media freedom, the poor foreign language skills of its citizens and many, many other issues, though in the end it all went off more or less smoothly.

Having been to Kaohsiung many times over the past decade and several times over the last few months, I have been fascinated to observe their build-up.