Hong Kong handover: what links Olympians Siobhan Haughey, Cheung Ka-long and Doo Hoi-kem? All were babies in 1997
- Doo Hoi-kem, Cheung Ka-long and Siobhan Haughey were all born months either side of the city’s emergence from British colonial rule
- Over the past quarter of a century government funding for elite sport has risen to more than HK$735 million a year
Elite sport in Hong Kong has changed considerably over the past 25 years, not least in the support the city’s best athletes get when it comes to chasing their dreams.
In 1997, government funding for top-level sport stood at around HK$150 million. In the 2020-21 financial year it was over HK$735 million. Similarly, the maximum monthly grant for Tier A athletes was HK$10,000 in 2002; this year, it has been increased to HK$50,000.
It is difficult to argue over the correlation between that increase in spending and the record six Olympic medals Hong Kong’s athletes won in Tokyo last summer, especially when three of those medals belong to squad members born either side of the city’s return to China.
Gold medal winner Cheung Ka-long, double silver medallist Siobhan Haughey, who became the city’s first swimmer to medal and the first Hong Kong athlete to win two medals at a Games, and Doo Hoi-kem, who won bronze with the women’s table tennis team, are all products of a system that has grown exponentially over the past quarter of a century.
Facilities at the Hong Kong Sports Institute have been improved regularly, and a new HK$1.04 billion addition, with space for science laboratories, state of the art conditioning centres, and training spaces is expected to be ready by mid-2024.
It was not always that way. Doo has vivid memories of receiving a monthly grant of HK$5,000 when she became a full-time athlete at the age of 16 after leaving the prestigious Heep Yunn School.