In pursuit of its fourth consecutive Asian Games gold, the South Korean baseball team will play a crucial preliminary game against Chinese Taipei on Monday.
Chinese Taipei is regarded as the biggest obstacle to South Korea's path to the top of the podium. The first pitch is at 6:30 p.m. at Shaoxing Baseball and Softball Sports Centre in Shaoxing, southeast of the main host city, Hangzhou.
South Korea has put together a team of mostly under-24 players from its top domestic competition, the Korea Baseball Organization. Chinese Taipei will feature stars from its own league and also some U.S.-based minor leaguers.
This will be South Korea's second Group B game in the second stage of the competition.
The second stage consists of the preliminary round, the Super Round, placement round and finals.
There are two groups of four teams. After round robin action, the top two teams from each group will advance to the Super Round, while the bottom two will be relegated to the placement round.
The top two teams from Group A will face the top two teams from Group B. The preliminary round results between qualified teams will carry over to the Super Round. This means that if South Korea beats Chinese Taipei on Monday and both teams advance to the Super Round, South Korea will have one win in the bag.
Also on Monday, Cho Gwang-hee and Jang Sang-won will race in the final of the men's canoe sprint kayak double 500m in Hangzhou.
Cho and Jang had the second-fastest time in Saturday's heats with 1:37.030, 1.426 second back of China.
Cho was the Asian Games champion in the kayak single (K1) 200m in both 2014 and 2018. With his race out of the Asian Games here, Cho teamed up with Jang for the double event.
Source: Yonhap News Agency