The Taiwan Flash

Like any proper girl from Taiwan, Chi Cheng spent much of her trip to Rome for the 1960 Olympics carrying the baggage of male athletes. "It was my first time out of the country," she says, "and I was in shock. I had never seen Westerners before, or Negroes or television or Coca-Cola or eyes different from mine." Everything was so new and strange, in fact, that the prospect of running against Caucasian girls embarrassed her. She finished last in her qualifying heat in the 80-meter hurdles.

Now 26 and a senior at California State Polytechnic College, Chi Cheng has adapted to the West. She likes supermarkets. She digs rock music. And when she runs, only her competitors are embarrassed. Undefeated so far this season, she has established herself as the world's foremost female track star. At the National A.A.U. Championships in Los Angeles, she ran the 220-yd. dash in 22.6 sec., besting her own world record by one-tenth of a second. Last month the muscular (5 ft. 7 1/2 in., 136 lb.) Chi set a world record of 10 sec. flat in the 100-yd. dash. Having posted the season's best marks in four different events, Chi finds it hard to specialize her training. "Hurdles are supposed to be her best event," says her coach. Vince Reel. "But I could be wrong. In fact, she is so close to world-record times in so many events we wouldn't want to make a mistake."

Month of Parades. A shy, giggling girl off the track, Chi likes to work herself into a cold fury at race time. She does it by arguing with herself: "You are no good. Yes, I'm good. Ah, then go and suffer." Back in her home town of Hsin-chu, where she regularly beat the boys in races at school, Chi had none of the Western competitive drive. That she learned from Reel, who discovered her in 1962 when the State Department sent him to Taiwan to coach the Nationalist Chinese team for the Asian Games. Through Reel's intercession, the Taiwanese government agreed to send Chi to the U.S. to train in 1963. Five years later, she finished third in the 80-meter hurdles in Mexico City, thus becoming the only Asian woman to win a medal in an Olympic track event that year. "They had a parade for me in Taiwan every day for over a month," she says. "It was so wonderful. I didn't even mind the firecrackers."

Though some of her U.S. friends have suggested that she become an American citizen, Chi stoutly declares: "My skin is Chinese. My eyes are Chinese. My heart runs only for the Chinese." An A student in physical education, she plans to return to Taiwan to coach track after a year or two of graduate study. She says that she would like to impart the "religious feeling" of running. "I have reached the point," she says, "where if I lose a race, I figure God doesn't want me to win. So I pray to him, saying 'God, whatever I've done, please forgive me.' If I should win, well, I guess he wanted me to win." Considering her record, somebody up there obviously likes Chi Cheng.

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