2007 Master Forum on Walking in Taiwan warms up for the Taiwan Walking Day

November 9, 2007 Before the "Taiwan Walking Day", Sports Affairs Council of Executive Yuan (SAC Taiwan) held "2007 Master forum on Walking" at Da-Hsin Campus of Chinese Culture University today. This forum invited walking experts from Japan, Belgium, and USA to share experiences on promotion of walking. Chi Cheng, spokeswoman of Taiwan Walking Day, thanked SAC Taiwan for the promotion of public sports especially walking, and she appealed forum participants integrating sports into people's life to keep in healthy.

At the keynotes, Luc Henau, former president of International Marching League Walking Association (IMLWA), focused on the relationship between soul, spirit, society, and body. He pointed out the importance on walking, participation structure between different ages, and effective on social and neighborhood interactions by glancing the history of the IMLWA.

In the part of "Mr. Pedometer" W. Ron Sutton, he explained some successful cases of pedometer counting in their life and described some advances of walking. Finally, Japanese "10,000 steps a day" expert Yoshiro Hatano analyzed some statistics to emphasize the importance between health and sports. "Some cardiovascular diseases were originated with bad habits, nutrition problems, and doing less sports." Hatano said.

After the speech, Min-yu Wu (General Manager of Taiwan Post Co., Ltd.) and Jongher Yang (Commissioner of SAC Taiwan) announced the release of "2007 Walking Stamp", and awarded "2007 Recreation Sports Stamp" to the panelists (Henau, Sutton, and Hatano) for the end of this forum.