TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) and “Taiwan's Fastest Man” Yang Chun-han (楊俊瀚) were the flag bearers at Sunday's (Aug. 11) closing ceremonies for the Paris Olympics which saw Taiwan win seven medals.
Taiwan took home two gold and five bronze medals, ranking 35th out of the 206 participating nations. The two golds tied Taiwan's record for the most golds, while the total medal haul was Team Taiwan's second-most. The nation won 12 medals in Tokyo.
The golds were won by the men's badminton duo of Lee Yang (李洋) and Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) and Lin in the women’s boxing 57kg weight class. Kuo Hsing-chun (郭婞淳) could not repeat her gold medal performance from Tokyo due to injuries and settled for the bronze in the women's 59kg weightlifting competition, but was the first Taiwanese to medal in three straight Olympics.
Boxer Chen Nien-chin (陳念琴), also competing in her third Olympics, took bronze in the women's 66kg class. Gymnast Tang Chia-hung (唐嘉鴻) captured the bronze in the men's horizontal bar.
Wu Shih-yi (吳詩儀) boxed her way to bronze in the women's 60kg weight class. Sharpshooter Lee Meng-yuan (李孟遠) bagged Taiwan's first medal, a bronze, in the men's skeet event.
At the closing ceremony on Sunday evening, Lin served as the female flag bearer for Team Taiwan, while Yang was the male representative. Also present were women's table tennis player Cheng Yi-ching (鄭怡靜) and the Taiwan table tennis coach Zheng Jiaqi (鄭佳奇), breakdancer Sun Chen (孫振) and his coach Su Chih-peng (蘇志鵬), track athlete Peng Ming-yang (彭名揚) and track coaches Tseng Hsiao-sheng (曾孝生) and Tsai I-ta (蔡易達), per CNA.
The crescendo of the ceremony was when actor Tom Cruise rappelled into the Stade de France from the roof, ran up to the stage, and grabbed the Olympic flag from Simone Biles and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. As he left the stage, he affixed the flag to the back of a motorcycle and road out of the stadium onto a plane before cutting to a video of him skydiving over Los Angeles and delivering the flag to the host city of the 2028 Olympics.
