ASIAN GAMES/Young skateboarders achieve milestones for Taiwan at Asian Games

Nagoya, Sept. 25 (CNA) Two young skateboarders from Taiwan won the country's first-ever men's and women's medals in the Asian Games' park skateboarding competition on Friday at Japan's Aichi Sky Expo.

The medal-winning day began when 14-year-old Yvonne Lin (林逸凡) won Taiwan's first-ever park skateboarding medal, a silver, since the sport debuted at the 2018 edition of the quadrennial Asian Games in Indonesia.

Soon after, 12-year-old Max Ku (辜泳諺) won Taiwan's first men's park skateboarding medal at the Asian Games with his own silver and also became Taiwan's youngest Asian Games medal winner, after Lin had set the record about two hours before.

With his 83.73 score from Thursday's preliminaries, the skateboarding wunderkind entered Friday's finals as the second-highest-ranked skateboarder in the eight-man field.

In the finals, however, Ku struggled. His best run of the first three runs was a 70.50 that left him in fifth place, barely qualifying him for a fourth and final "golden run."

Skateboarders typically see this extra run in competitions as a high-risk, high-reward chance to go for it, and Ku nailed it with an 87.33 score, 1.63 points behind gold medalist Izuru Nagahara of Japan and 1.30 points ahead of bronze medalist Gunjo Shiji of Japan.

Ku said afterwards that he was indeed nervous during his first three runs, adding that he felt comfortable enough to pull out all the stops when his father calmed his nerves right before the final attempt.

Lin won silver with a score of 85.15 from her first run in the women's finals on Friday, behind Japanese gold medalist Mizuho Hasegawa, who had a score of 94.03 from her second run, and Japanese bronze medalist Misugu Okamoto, whose best run was an 82.86.

Although Lin's father said the family has invested around NT$10 million over the past three years to train the young skateboarder, the prodigy dedicated her silver medal to her cat.

Lin said cats have been a lucky charm for her since a first encounter with one when she competed in Rome two years ago.

The young athlete first debuted in the skateboard world at the "Grind for Life Series at Tampa Bowl Women's" event on Dec. 2, 2022, at only 10 years of age.

She then became the youngest member of Taiwan's delegation at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games actually held in 2023 when she was 11.