Chinese Taipei principal deaf tennis player, Chiu-Mei HO, wins the World Cup, defeating all the opponents in singles. Provided by the 21st Summer Deaflympics Organising Committee.

Taiwan’s woman tennis players once again amazed the world. Led by the principal player Chiu-Mei HO, a retired player from early national teams, Chinese Taipei reversed the game by 2:1 in the final on July 29th, defeated the host team and won the World Deaf Tennis Cup after a week of matches in Munich, Germany.

This is the first time Taiwan took part in the Dresse and Maere Cups (World Deaf Tennis Cup.) If not for the 2009 Taipei Deafyympics, Secretary General Yu-Ping CHAO of the Chinese Taipei Sports Association of the Deaf vigorously advocated to participate in the event with the assistance of President Bin-Yan YANG of the Sih-Wei Co., Ltd., Chiu-Mei HO would have had no chance of wearing the Chinese-Taipei uniform again after she retired from the international tennis competitions twenty years ago.

Dresse and Maere Cups, drawing much attention in Europe, have been held annually for the past twenty years. Of Asian countries, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and India have participated in the tournament. In the past week, winning the first place, Chinese Taipei, as a first-timer, truly surprised all. Especially when they learned that HO and her sister, Chiu-Hsiang HO, were respectively 45 and 48 years old, they could not help giving them the thumbs-up.

Sixteen countries participated in Dresse and Maere Cups, twelve of them were European. Woman contests have eight countries. In the preliminaries, Chinese Taipei beat Turkey by 3:0, Japan by 3:0, Britain by 2:1. In the semifinal, they defeated Spain by a narrow margin, 2:1. In the final, Chinese Taipei was in the face of the host country, Germany. Except ICSD President Donalda Ammons, Mr. Yu-ping CHAO, three Chinese Taipei male players and a few TDOC staff, all the audience in the stadium of the tennis club "Grün-Weiß Luitpoldpark" were rooting for their own players. Nonethelessly, Ho splendidly performed in the final. After losing to Yu-Chen LAI by 0:2, Ho went on to fight against the 17-year-old principal player of Germany, H. Albrecht. The results of the first two sets were tied by 7: 6, 4: 6; at one point in the last set, Ho fell behind her rival by 0: 3, but she reversed the game by thrashing Albrecht in a row of six sets, and at the end won the woman singles’ title.    

In woman doubles, Ho joined her elder sister, Chiu-Hsiang HO. They lost the first set by 3:6, but unexpectedly won the next two sets by 6: 3, 6: 4, and finally achieved the gold. At the age of 45, Chiu-Mei HO’s battle lasted for more than five hours in this day. It is really touching that she and her older sister competed all day long with the players who were almost their children’s age, but they were no inferior to the young people, no matter in skills or physical strength.

The Ho sisters became hard of hearing after thirty years old, now both reply on the hearing aids in daily life. Chiu-Mei HO works at Sih-Wei Co., Ltd.  President Bin-Yan YANG, has supported tennis sport for years. He has been sponsoring Chiu-Mei HO, Su-Hsing LIN, Su-Chu LIN, Shi-Ting WANG, Judy WENG, Yung-Jan CHAN, Chin-Wei CHAN, and etc. Ho only works in the morning; in the afternoon, she practices tennis at Yang-Ming Senior High School. 

The rankings of the woman team competitions of t Dresse and Maere Cups are as follows: 1. Chinese Taipei, 2. Germany, 3. Spain, 4. Britain; the rankings of the man team competitions as follows: 1. Austria, 2. Holland, 3. Germany, 4. Britain, Chinese Taipei is at the eighth place, Japan the seventh, China the tenth, the USA the thirteenth place, and Russian the fourteenth.