Taiwan's Lin Yu-hsuan clinches gold at World Taekwondo championships

Taipei, Dec. 1 (CNA) Taiwanese athlete Lin Yu-hsuan (林侑萱) won a gold medal in the junior female individual division at the 2024 World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships held in Hong Kong on Saturday.

Lin defeated South Korea's Seo Chae Won by 0.02 points in the 15- to 17-year-old finals, winning the Taiwanese team's first gold medal in the event. It was also her first gold medal in an international competition.

Lin, a sophomore at National Keelung Girls' Senior High School, has been practicing taekwondo since her freshman year. She won a gold medal in the 63kg category of the junior high school division's sparring event at the 2023 National High School Games.

In the 2022 World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships in Goyang, Lin bagged a silver medal in the women's team's competition covering the 12-14 age group.

According to a coach team at the Keelung high school, Lin's school sparring coach is Chien Yu-nan (簡育南). She usually trains at the school during the day and commutes to New Taipei's Taishan in the evening to receive guidance from Poomsae coach Li Cheng-gang (李晟綱), who was a national player in the past.

Li told CNA that sparring and poomsae training can complement each other. He hopes that with Lin's gold medal victory, she will have the opportunity to win a gold in sparring at the World Championships in the future, he said.