Singapore’s Darren Yap earns a bronze at first Asiad virtual taekwondo event

NAGOYA – As he walked out to the hip-hop tune of Wu-Tang Clan’s Bring da Ruckus, Darren Yap looked like he was having fun as he hit the woah – a viral dance move– before he created another slice of history for Singapore taekwondo.

With a joint-bronze in the first Asian Games virtual taekwondo mixed individual event on Oct 2, Yap collected his second medal of the continental meet.

He had won a men’s individual poomsae joint-bronze the previous day for the Republic’s first Asiad taekwondo medal.

His latest achievement meant that the unique feat of winning medals in both physical and virtual events became a reality for the 22-year-old undergrad.

He said: “It feels surreal. The medal yesterday hasn’t really fully sunk in yet because I had to prepare for today.

“I came here happy, smiling, because of my result yesterday and I’m glad to add on to that. After all of these, I can finally soak it in and just enjoy the moment.”

In front of a sprinkling of spectators who included about 100 screaming schoolkids at the Toyohashi City General Gymnasium, Yap first beat Kyrgyzstan’s Alisher Asymbek Uluu 2-0 (660-0, 360-0) in the first round, and then Iran’s Amirsina Bakhtiari 2-0 (80-0, 580-20) in the quarter-finals to be assured of a second medal.

In the semi-finals, he lost 2-0 (640-0, 800-0) to Vietnam’s Chau Ngoc Tuyet Sang, who was later beaten 2-0 (500-0, 620-0) in the final by Filipino Jeus Yape, also a men’s individual poomsae joint-bronze medallist.

In the gender-neutral virtual taekwondo, athletes don virtual reality headgear and motion-tracking devices to take on opponents in the virtual world.

Through the goggles, they can see their opponent’s avatar and health bar. By delivering kicks to the head or body of the opponent’s avatar, the aim is to reduce the score on a rival’s power gauge to zero, or have a higher score at the end of each one-minute round in the best-of-three match.

They are not allowed to step out of the boundary, which also shrinks after a period of inactivity to force athletes to fight.

Yap, who took up taekwondo with his father and older brother when he was four, and sparred from seven to 15 before switching to poomsae, first experienced the virtual form at the inaugural Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in 2023.

But it was not until August that he started learning the game play seriously. He looked for sparring partners and went to a familiarisation camp in South Korea to prepare for the Asiad.

He said: “For poomsae, I control everything myself, but in virtual taekwondo I’m reacting to situations caused by another person, so that’s a big difference. But the technology is cool and the gameplay is fun.

“The mixed gender event is a very interesting format, and it’s quite cool that athletes of different genders are able to play the sport together and it allows more people to experience taekwondo.”

However, the debut event also saw teething calibration and connection issues which led to a delay of around 20 minutes in the programme.

Athletes, who sometimes fought in the virtual world facing the backs of their opponents in real life as they pranced about the mat, were also seen taking time-outs to adjust the motion-tracking devices on their legs as they moved out of place.

There have also been questions raised about whether this event is actually taekwondo or should have been categorised under e-sports instead.

Yap said: “It’s a fair opinion, but once you try the technology and the game, maybe you would understand it’s similar to traditional taekwondo, but without the contact part of the sparring.”

On Oct 1, Yap had secured a joint-bronze in the men’s individual poomsae when he tallied 9.0400 points from his recognised and freestyle poomsae routines to finish fourth behind South Korean Yun Lyu-sung (9.3800), Thai Navin Pinthasute (9.2800) and Yape (9.0900).

Previously, he had also won bronze medals at the SEA Games and World Combat Games, and his competitive appetite has been whetted by his unprecedented success over these two days.

Asked about his next goal, he said: “To be a world champion. We have the SEA Games next year too, so we’ll see where that leads us.”

Rounding up its campaign, Singapore Taekwondo Federation secretary-general Alan Lee said: “Our results stem from long-term planning and a firm commitment to building high-performance taekwondo.

“Moving forward, we hope this success encourages our young athletes to pursue their goals.”