TAIPEI CITY – The Taipei 2017 Summer Universiade will kick-off on 19 August. In the meantime, the Universiade Flame continues its itinerary around the island with the torch relay that began overseas when the mother flame was lit at a ceremony in Turin, Italy on 20 June. After a busy schedule that saw the relay held in four cities in three countries over 10 days, the sacred flame returned to Chinese Taipei on 29 June. The first leg of the domestic torch relay, reached the summit of Taipei’s highest mountain Mt. Jade (3,952 meters) at 5:20 am on 7 July, lighting up the highest point on the island. The torch relay will now follow a LOVE shaped route as it links 22 counties/cities across Chinese Taipei, promoting this major sporting event and spreading the Universiade spirit.
The LOVE route will proceed in order starting with L, which links three outlying counties, namely Penghu, Kinmen and Lianjiang. The first leg of this part of the relay was held in Penghu on 13 July 13. Taipei Universiade Organizing Committee attached great importance to the torch relay and TUOC CEO Li-Chiung Su led the team to Penghu. The first leg of the domestic torch relay saw the torch passed from runners on land to a sailing boat, an innovative method planned by Penghu County Government.
The Penghu torch relay began at 1:30pm in the County Government Square. Jia-Jia Chuang, winner of taekwondo gold at the 2011 Shenzhen Universiade and gold at the 2015 World Championships and 2014 and 2016 Asian Championships taekwondo gold medallist of the 2011 Shenzhen Universiade, 2015 World Championship, 2014 and 2016 Asian Championship, represented Taipei City as a torchbearer and passed the sacred flame to the Penghu County torch relay team. The running torchbearers for Penghu were Jian-You Ou, who represented Taipei at the Asian Youth Games in the high jump and now teaches at Magong Junior High School, and Magong High School teacher Hui-Zhen Zhang; the torch was passed to Penghu County Magistrate Guang-Fu Chen in the square in front of the Sailing Training Center in Guanyinting Park; Magistrate Chen then passed it to Jin-Long Xin and Hao Zhang, both of whom have represented Chinese Taipei in windsurfing at the Asian Games and the Olympics, Zhi-Kai Xu, who won the national windsurfing championship in 2011, 2013 and 2015, and Xiu-Zhen Yan, an up and coming windsurfer who was third and fourth in the women’s national windsurfing championship in 2013 and 2015, respectively. After being carried on land, the relay method changed as the torch was transferred to a sailing boat, where the relay continues to convey love and sporting spirit against the beautiful backdrop of sails, sea and sky.
The L route will continue to Kinmen County on 15 July, where the FISU Flame will be carried through four townships of the county, past its charming and distinctive historic buildings; on 17 July, the relay will move to Lianjiang County, in the northernmost tip of the island, where the torch will carry across the two smaller islands Nangan and Beigan. After the L part of the Chinese Taipei torch relay is completed, the O part will begin on 19 July without a break, spanning Yilan County, Hualien County, Miaoli County and Taichung City.
(Source: TUOC 2017)
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