Hong Kong athletics boss says invited athletes don’t deserve to be called Olympians
Athletics association’s Simon Yeung says city’s young need to fully commit to sport, but ‘not my place’ to tell them to forgo higher education
Hong Kong’s athletes need to fully commit if they want to become Olympians, with one city official saying those gifted qualification did not truly deserve the title.
The city’s lone track and field representative in last year’s Olympics, sprinter Felix Diu Chun-hei, was the recipient of one of the universality places handed to under-represented National Olympic Committees.
He was eliminated in the preliminary round in Paris. Vera Lui Lai-yiu, the sprint hurdler, also used the back door route into last month’s World Championships, where she failed to get out of her heat.
Looking towards the 2028 Olympics, Simon Yeung Sai-mo, senior vice-chairman of the Hong Kong, China Association of Athletics Affiliates (HKAAA), said his organisation’s aim was “to have athletes who qualify by standard … then you’re a real Olympian”.
Hong Kong’s men’s 4x100m quartet in 2012 were the city’s last track and field athletes to qualify by right for an Olympics. Marathon runner Christy Yiu Kit-ching earned her spot for Rio 2016, and Jessica Ching Siu-nga, the race walker, followed suit for Tokyo 2020.
Yeung underlined the scale of the task of producing genuine Olympians when he noted that Hong Kong’s finest would compete with provinces that are either “equal to or better than them” at next month’s National Games.