Hong Kong Olympic swimmer Yvette Kong happy to keep on defying traditional limitations

Tired of the stereotypical expectations imposed on her as a young girl, Yvette Kong Man-yi “cut my hair short and looked like a little boy”. “I was from that era where they forced me to take ballet classes,” said 2016 Olympic Games swimmer Kong. “I wasn’t into wearing skirts and dresses … I was very into soccer, and a huge fan of Michael Owen. “During the 2002 World Cup, I was wearing a jersey with his name on the back and blended into a bunch of boys playing on a small football court. If they knew I was a girl, I’m not sure they’d have let me play. I was literally bending it like Beckham: I really liked that movie.” An inherent instinct to defy traditional limitations would define Kong’s career – in the pool and beyond. She gives credit to “inspiring” skiing superstar Eileen Gu for showing “there’s no reason we should put a ceiling on young Asian women”. A film of Kong’s own life would deliver the same powerful message. “I think it’s time to flip the script a bit,” she said. The high-achieving 33-year-old’s latest venture, the “accumulation of a life’s work and lived experiences”, is a start-up aimed at “shaping how we define human capability in the next century”. Arelyx, which Kong launched last year, seeks to equip people with the “resilience, judgment, ethical clarity and agency to thrive in the AI age”. It has already partnered with more than 10 schools, and early pilots have shown measurable gains in students’ “cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation”. “For a long time, we’ve measured our worth by what we can do – the skills we master, the results we produce – but many of those skills can now be automated,” said Kong, adding that the AI era is “asking us to become fully human beings, not human doings”. Kong refused to ditch her Olympic dream after missing the 2012 Games by 0.1 seconds, a blow that “once felt definitive, but later felt like an opening”. She recovered to qualify for the 100 metres breaststroke four years later by the same infinitesimal distance, following a period of living with depression and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. It was memories of her road to Olympic redemption that reassured Kong last year, as she navigated a period ahead of launching her business that “tested my conviction as I bet on myself before there was any proof this could work”. “I had a few moments where I felt I was hanging on by a thread … that same 0.1-second margin,” she said. “In sport you make it or fail, but last year I felt like it was hitting on my survival, which was very humbling and changed my perspective on a lot of things. The Olympic journey taught me how to manage uncertainty with conviction; without it, I don’t think I’d have managed the past three years.” As a swimmer, Kong panicked during sessions that demanded she “restricted my breath over long distances to increase underwater efficiency and lung capacity”. “Your lungs burn, your body wants to gasp, and if you let your thoughts spiral, your heart rate rises and you consume oxygen faster,” said Kong, who learned over time that “regulating my thoughts regulated my physiology”. “When I stayed calm, my heart rate lowered to minimise oxygen usage and I could go farther than I thought was possible,” she said. “Building Arelyx … there were moments of resource constraint and uncertainty, but instead of reacting to the pressure, I had to learn to hold steady and redirect my thoughts. “For a long time, I thought limits were something you pushed against or worked within … Now I see them as perspectives you eventually outgrow.” Kong is gradually easing her grip on her cherished enterprise, allowing it to “fly” under a group of “extremely bright, capable and accountable staff” who are all female. “In the first 30 years of my life, I always wanted to prove a lot … things happened by force. Now I want to build a team and move forwards through alignment,” she said. “Like Eileen Gu showed, there’s no reason why we should put a ceiling on young Asian women … and there’s no reason why we can’t do something on a global scale.” Speaking ahead of Sunday’s International Women’s Day (IWD), Kong said she had encountered “subconscious” gender bias in sport and business, but “rarely in obvious or dramatic ways”. “It’s subtle; it’s in who feels entitled to speak first, who assumes leadership is theirs by default, and who feels they need to prove themselves twice before taking up space,” Kong said. “Growing up, I internalised the idea that I had to earn my authority before claiming it. I’ve also seen how many men are conditioned to equate leadership with dominance or certainty. Both scripts are limiting. And most of the time, they’re unconscious.” Not interested in framing this as “men versus women”, Kong believes leadership ideas “shaped in the industrial era, when dominance, control and hierarchy were rewarded” have given way to an AI-driven century where the traits that matter most are “adaptability, ethical judgment, emotional regulation and resilience”. “Those qualities aren’t male or female,” she said. “They’re human, and they can be cultivated. “The key IWD message I’d share is that limitations shrink when our inner capacity expands; that’s when we become who we dare to imagine.” Born in Canada to parents from Hong Kong, Kong was “a crying baby” when she moved to the city at around six months old. “I stayed here until college, so I had a very Hong Kong upbringing,” she said. Seeing “grace and grit somehow happening together”, as underwater cameras relayed the 2000 Olympic swimming programme into her living room, Kong was “hypnotised”. “It felt like the pinnacle of human endeavour,” she said. “That same fascination with human potential drives my work today. If my childhood idol, Michael Owen, and Eileen Gu represented boundary-breaking possibility, I believe the next frontier lies in expanding how young people understand their own capacity.” Kong’s passion for her sport was challenged when she was coached by Teri McKeever at University of California, Berkeley. Those four years “forced me to confront the darker side of high-performance culture … they became foundational to my philosophy on leadership and education”. “It was the first time I realised that excellence without psychological safety has a cost,” Kong said. “Coaches, teachers and mentors operate inside people’s nervous systems. Growth does not come from comfort alone; but nor does it come from pressure without safety.” Following an investigation into her conduct, after complaints from more than 20 former and current swimmers, American McKeever was sacked in 2023. “In a way I was fortunate I got so low that I needed to see a therapist,” said Kong, who was not one of the complainants. “It was a sink-or-swim situation where I really swam, but only because I’d hit rock bottom. “I learned speaking recently to some former athletes who were impacted, but not seriously enough to get professional help at the time it happened, that it had affected them for years. That was a big revelation for me.” Last year, Kong co-authored a peer-reviewed paper examining how coaches can “calibrate their athletes to foster both growth and well-being”. She advocates a “sweet spot” where “we guide the person through adversity without holding their hand”. “High performance is a laboratory,” Kong said. “It can be redesigned to bring out the best potential in people without damaging them; that applies everywhere: in classrooms, companies and even how we raise children.” Also the mastermind behind a cultural innovation project, Kong is interested in taking “my art” further. “Life moves fast, but I’m building deliberately,” she said. “I approach art in a primal sense because sport was my first artistic language. To me, sports are about going to the edge of human capacity and feeling fully alive there.” For now, Kong is “keeping my head down” and making sure Arelyx is where it needs to be on its mission to “build a human capability infrastructure for the AI age”. Again, she cites Gu, who after claiming one gold and two silver from the recent Winter Olympics, said she was a “very introspective young woman” who “can control what I think … and become who I want”. “That level of self-direction is powerful … if you can regulate your thoughts, you regulate your trajectory and at Arelyx. we’re building the mental architecture that makes resilience sustainable,” said Kong, who, with her angst in the past, allowed herself time off over Chinese New Year, because “it’s a discipline to work hard, but it’s also a discipline to rest”. A strand of this year’s IWD ‘Give To Gain’ theme encourages people to challenge stereotypes. Having been told as a young girl that she should not be pursuing sport, and the athletic body it would create, and eventually chopping off her locks in protest, Kong said: “Muscle mass is an important indicator for longevity … I think we should base beauty around health and not trends. Beauty has shifted across eras and societies, but we should anchor it in health. “Strength, vitality, and longevity are not trends – they’re foundations.”

Hong Kong Olympic swimmer Yvette Kong happy to keep on defying traditional limitations

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The high-achieving 33-year-old’s latest venture is a start-up aimed at ‘shaping how we define human capability in the next century’

The high-achieving 33-year-old’s latest venture is a start-up aimed at ‘shaping how we define human capability in the next century’