Taipei (dpa) - An Olympic baseball qualifying tournament that sees eight teams competing for three places in Beijing is starting in Taiwan on Friday.

The eight participants in the 2008 IBAF Final Olympic Qualifying Tournament failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics in regional qualifying tournaments, but will have another chance.

The eight teams come from Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Spain, Mexico, South Africa and Germany, who are competing following Britain's withdrawal.

Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and Mexico are considered the main contenders while Germany, Spain and South Africa rank as outsiders.

The tournament is being organized by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) and will last until March 14.

On the opening day, four games will take place at the Taichung International Baseball Stadium and the Touliu Baseball Stadium, in central and west Taiwan respectively.

The games are between South Africa-South Korea, Mexico-Canada, Taiwan-Spain, Germany-Australia.

For local fans it seems unlikely that the competition will have a positive outcome as the home side is not considered as one of the favourites to make it to the Olympics.

The Taiwanese side was also weakened by the withdrawal of several top players, including outfielder Chen Chin-feng, who is playing for LA Dodgers, pulled out for various reasons.

They also had to withdraw two further players on Wednesday after they tested positive to a banned substance, which the Chinese-Taipei Baseball Association claimed was in a medicine the players were taking to cure an sickness.

Despite all these hurdles, Hong Yi-chung, coach for the Taiwan team, expressed confidence in Taiwan's winning the ticket to the Beijing Olympics.

"In the past four months, Taiwan has hosted three international baseball tournaments. So I believe out team can win a wild card to the Beijing Olympics," he told a pre-game news conference on Thursday.

But many Taiwanese think otherwise as Taiwan team's performance has been sliding, and some even hope the Taiwan team will not win the wild card, because they don't want the team to lose face at the Beijing Olympics.

"If Taiwan attends the Olympics and loses to China, then we will become the laughing stock of the whole world," Lee Pei-hsiung, a Taipei worker said.

China is considered the weakest among the eight participating teams in the Beijing Olympics.

There will be eight national teams taking part at the Beijing Olympics. They are the Netherlands, the United States, Cuba, Japan, China and the three teams that qualify in Taiwan.

China qualifies automatically as hosts.

The Beijing Games will be the last time that baseball players compete at the Olympics, as it has been scrapped from the programme for future Games.

Baseball is popular in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the US and many parts of Latin America. Australia and Canada both have players in the Major League Baseball.

China, to assert its place as a sports giant in the world, has begun to train baseball players in recent years, using Taiwanese baseball coaches.

Thailand is also catching up. It began to take baseball seriously in 1992 and has hired three Japanese coaches to train its baseball players.