OLYMPICS / Barcelona 1992: Baseball: Taiwanese silver lining

TAIWAN'S baseball players may not have won the Olympics (they lost 11-1 to Cuba in the final) but they struck gold all right.

Their government, grateful beyond belief for their first silver medal since that won by Yang Chuan-kwang in the 1960 decathlon, handed over dollars 4.4m ( pounds 2.3m) to the beaten finalists. There are no restrictions on how the players, who will each receive a 'scholarship' of dollars 220,000 ( pounds 117,000), spend it.

And what of the Cubans? 'I'm sure our people back home will be overjoyed with this win,' their manager, Jorge Fuentes, said.