Asia Pride Games Taipei 2022 comes to a successful close
Authorized by the Asia Pride Games Alliance, the Asia Pride Games 2022 was held in Taipei for the first time. After five days of exciting competition, the event came to a perfect end in Taipei on May 3. Taipei City Government, Sports Administration of Ministry of Education, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexican Trade Services Documentation and Cultural Office, Indonesian representative of the Asia Pride Games Alliance and other national representatives attended the closing ceremony in person and offered their congratulations. Together, they affirmed the values displayed by the Asia Pride Games and the friendly city image they have built. Furthermore, the aim was to let the international community see the results of Taiwan’s efforts in the area of sports gender equality.
At the opening ceremony, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Education Lin Teng-chiao thanked everyone for working towards sports equality, and said fostering gender equality in sport is about letting the world see Taiwan. Athletes from at least 27 countries and regions as well as Taiwan took part in the 12 sports of the Games. The American Institute in Taiwan, Bureau Français de Taipei, Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association and various other representative offices in Taiwan formed teams to take part and also participated in and supported the international sports equality meeting that was held, sharing Pride games related experience in various countries.
In the closing ceremony, Sports Administration Deputy Director General Lin Che-hung presented the “Outstanding Volunteer Award” to commend eight volunteers who represented the 200-plus volunteers who served enthusiastically during the event. Also, the “Asia LGBTQ+ Sports Equal Rights Advocate Award”was presented to commend people behind the scenes who were instrumental in making the Games happen, the award going to Indonesia’s Asia Pride Games Alliance representative and chairperson of The Straits Games Soejaya Kedun and Munehara Ohata. As well as looking back on the video highlights of the event in the closing ceremony, the ceremony to handover to the representative of next host of the event, Cambodia, was conducted, arranging to meet in Phnom Penh next year.
The Asia Pride Games Taipei 2022 was jointly organized by the Taiwan Gay Sports and Movement Association and the Department of Sport, Taipei City Government. In his speech at the closing ceremony Taipei City Deputy Mayor Tsai Ping-kun expressed support for sports equality and also thanked everyone who gave support for making the event a success. He said that Taipei City holds sports events, international seminars and diverse cultural activities to convey the image of a gender friendly city; the spirit of diverse gender group equality will continue to be implemented with Taipei as the starting point as a sports equality city.