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Paul McNamara

Hong Kong has the father of Ceci Lee Sze-wing to thank for the city producing a potential successor to two-time Olympic bronze medal cycling star Sarah Lee Wai-sze.
Ceci Lee began her sporting life as a triathlete, where her performances were undermined by her one weak suit: cycling.
“I just wasn’t good at it,” she said. “My dad wanted me to improve my results, so I focused more on my cycling.”
She enrolled on the local association’s Stars of Tomorrow programme and “started to enjoy the speed and variety, the different types of races and competing indoors and on the road”.
Lee switched lock, stock and barrel to the bike, aged 12. Half a lifetime later, she is going to the National Games as one of Hong Kong’s greatest medal hopes.
Once upon a time, that weight of expectation might have suffocated the 24-year-old; she has acknowledged that going to the 2021 Games in Shaanxi as an unknown quantity was partly responsible for her dashing to an unexpected road race gold.
Lee has previously spoken candidly about suffering from performance anxiety. Last year, the city team’s head coach, Herve Dagorne, likened his rider to a football striker whose nerve fails them in front of an empty net.
“Psychology is the detail that makes the difference for her,” said Dagorne, who has never hidden his belief in Lee’s talent. “It feels like a mountain for her.”
The foothills of that mountain are now in Lee’s rear-view mirror.

She has had to live with a lot of hype since 2019, when Dagorne’s predecessor, Shen Jinkang, christened the then 18-year-old “the star rider of the next generation”.
Lee, who would initially lag at the back when she began competing, had already claimed Asian Junior Championships road race gold and omnium bronze in the senior Asian Track Championships when Shen made his bold prediction.
She repeated the omnium feat the following year and in 2023 upgraded to silver. Becoming a serious all-rounder, Lee collected four medals from the 2024 championships. Her five-medal haul this year included a first continental gold in the scratch race.
“She was thinking only about gold and doesn’t want silver or bronze,” said Dagorne, providing insight into a notable mindset shift.
Lee reached her emotional nadir last year. She qualified for the Paris Olympics road race and omnium by right, and arrived in the French capital in condition to finish in the top 12 of the track event.
On the road, she showed her gutsy credentials over a rolling 158-kilometre course that forced 14 riders to quit. Battling hunger, with her support car unable to deliver food amid traffic mayhem, Lee “suffered on all the hills” as she clung to her rivals’ pedals, before coming home 64th in the “hardest race of my life”.

The satisfaction of becoming the first woman from Hong Kong to complete an Olympic road race gave way to tears and regret the following week when she endured an “intense and unhappy” experience in the four-discipline omnium.
“I didn’t know what I was doing out there,” an overwhelmed Lee said after she had finished 20th out of 22 competitors.
She has since revealed she felt “really depressed” as she read unfavourable social media commentary while waiting for doping tests in the bowels of the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.
As someone who perennially feared disappointing others, Lee spoke after that Olympic race of “letting down the coach [Dagorne] in each and every race”.
It was heartening, therefore, to listen to a noticeably more demonstrative Lee in the minutes after she ran the former omnium world champion Yumi Kajihara desperately close in March’s Games test event.
“I’ve analysed video and changed mentally,” she said. “I don’t care about the media and won’t talk about my targets. The process is more important than the results … this experience is a template for my future performances.”
Here’s Dagorne on the same competition: “I was really surprised by her. It was physically the hardest race of her life, and all day she was technically and tactically involved in the race. She’s never suffered like that. It’s what I’ve wanted for the past year and a half, and it could be a turning point.”

The old flaws have not been totally eradicated. In July’s China Track Championships, Lee built a 12-point omnium lead after three disciplines, only to sink to seventh following a closing points race where Dagorne said she did not execute the strategy they had agreed upon.
Lee said she had treated her Paris disappointment as a salutary lesson, after discovering the small gap she had fondly imagined existed between her and the world’s best was in fact “really big”.
She narrowed her focus on improving and found a clarity of thought that has enabled Lee, tagged “The Little Queen of Hong Kong Cycling” by local media, to talk positively about emulating Sarah Lee.
Formerly reluctant to entertain comparisons with the five-time National Games medallist, she said this year that the older Lee “is one of the targets for me”.
“My biggest ambition is to win Olympic and world championship medals,” said Ceci Lee, who answered with a steely “yes” when asked if she genuinely believed she could reach global podiums.
Lee has plenty of champions in her corner. The two-time Olympic gold medal cyclist Victoria Pendleton, who had her own miserable debut Games experience in Athens in 2004, said the Hongkonger’s French low would be her “greatest asset”.
“It has to hurt, because if it hurts, you fight to avoid it happening again for the rest of your days,” Pendleton told the Post. “I wish her all the best and I hope [Paris] is her greatest motivation.”
Sarah Lee, who confirmed her retirement in 2023, told the Post this year that “my story has gone on too long … it is time for a new name”.
It is Ceci, not Sarah, who will shoulder the bulk of the responsibility for trying to add to Hong Kong’s 23 cycling medals from seven National Games.

Lee will be more tactically tuned in than four years ago when she defends her road race title in Zhuhai on November 9, a strength she has developed under Ben Kersten, the Australian who was appointed Hong Kong road endurance coach this year.
Lee finished second in this year’s Tour of Thailand, where Hong Kong won team honours, and claimed bronze in February’s Asian Championships road race. She has won on the road in Australia too, and it is in Perth that Lee and her teammates are currently finessing their Games plans.
Winning the omnium, with its all-round demands, would please her the most, while there could be more chances for joy in the Madison, sprint and team pursuit.
Lee has sacrificed this month’s World Track Championships in Chile to focus on her Games ambitions, pointing to next year’s edition in Shanghai as the place to begin chasing global prizes.
Whatever the outcomes next month, Lee will not lack courage, belief or desire. In her home Hong Kong Velodrome, she will have bags of supporters too, among them a dad who might fairly reflect that he knows a thing or two about sport.


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Sport

Hong Kong

Ceci Lee has come from positions of weakness again and again to become one of the city’s strongest medal hopes next month


Ceci Lee has come from positions of weakness again and again to become one of the city’s strongest medal hopes next month.


Ceci Lee Sze-wing

Sarah Lee Wai-sze

Herve Dagorne

Ben Kersten

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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Ceci Lee has come from positions of weakness again and again to become one of the city’s strongest medal hopes next month

Ceci Lee has come from positions of weakness again and again to become one of the city’s strongest medal hopes next month