Action at last year's II World University Softball Championship in Tainan Municipal Softball Stadium, the site of the upcoming Asia/Oceania Olympic qualifier. (Photo by Christian Pierre)

1st of 3 OLYMPIC QUALIFIERS 3 WEEKS AWAY
2007-01-10

The big international softball event last year was, of course, the 15-nation Women’s World Championship in Beijing. Next year softball will be on the world’s stage at the Olympic Games. So what happens in the year in between? Plenty!

With all due respect to this year’s world championship [the Junior Women’s (19-and-under)], there is some serious softball to be played in 2007 as three regional qualifiers take place to determine the final berths in next year’s big event.

By virtue of being the host country, China is one of the known teams for the 2008 Olympic Softball competition. As a result of their finish at last year’s Women’s World Championship, Australia, Canada, Japan, and USA are four of the others that will participate in next year’s Summer Games. Now it’s time to add another country name to that list.

Beginning three weeks from tomorrow, the Asia/Oceania Olympic Qualifier will take place in Tainan City. As a result of being the highest placing finisher from those two regions combined to not gain an automatic berth, Chinese Taipei (eighth overall at the world championship) earned the right to host the event.

Running from February 1-7, the tournament will see six teams competing for that one final berth from Asia/Oceania: DPR Korea, (South) Korea, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, and the hosts. The event will take place at the new facility that was built in time to host last year’s II World University Softball Championship.

Chinese Taipei had posted a 4-3 record during round robin play at the world championship before losing in the playoffs to Canada, 3-2. DPR Korea was making its first-ever world championship appearance and finished 1-6, although it’s worth noting that two of their losses were by just one run, and two others were by two runs. Like Chinese Taipei and DPR Korea, (South) Korea is coming off the softball competition at the Asian Games last month in Qatar, so they should still be in full competition mode.

At the world championship, New Zealand and three other teams were 3-4, which was one game off the mark for what proved to be the cutoff for the last playoff spot. The Kiwis will be looking to return to the Olympics after having played in 2000 and then missed out in 2004.

The Philippines team has been relatively idle from major international competition but promises to be competitive, as evidenced by their fifth place finish at the 12-team Asian Women’s Championship in December 2004, which they followed up with a gold medal-winning performance at the 23rd Southeast Asian Games one year later.

Singapore finished eighth at the aforementioned Asian Women’s Championship and fourth at the SEA Games in 2005.

The other two Olympic qualifiers this year are Africa/Europe (June 9-16 in Italy) and the Americas (August 18-26 in Venezuela).