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Paul McNamara

A big believer that elite sporting performance is entirely dictated by an athlete’s brain, Greg Koenig is busy convincing Cheung Ka-long that the Asian Games remain an important date in his calendar.
Hong Kong’s first fencing superstar, Cheung has been there and done it over the past five years.
He brilliantly won a pair of Olympic golds, first as an unfancied underdog, then as the foil king his rivals all wanted to dethrone, either side of becoming Asian Games champion in 2023.
Of Cheung’s teammates in Japan this month, Harris Ho Shing-him and Leung Chin-yu, 17 and 21 respectively, will be making their debuts. Ryan Choi Chun-yin has a world title but is still desperately coveting his first Olympic medal.
“The psychological planning for Ka-long is different from the others, because he’s won everything,” Koenig said.

Finding direction and motivation after career-defining achievements is an age-old challenge for high-achieving competitors and coaches.
Josh Kerr, the 2023 1,500m world champion, broke the 27-year-old world mile record earlier this year. Before he banked US$150,000 for winning the 1,500m at last weekend’s World Ultimate Championship, Kerr told the South China Morning Post that he had “already left behind my achievements from this year”.
“For me now, I’m doing this for the joy of it, and I love what I do,” Kerr said. “The routine I find myself in, day in, day out, is very fulfilling, and it allows me to maximise my life.”
Already the owner of a record 24 men’s grand slam titles, Novak Djokovic said last year that his desire had not dimmed because he “still feels a connection with the inner child, the four-year-old boy who took a racquet and said, ‘I love this sport, I want to play it all day’”.
Originally keen to replicate the route of his basketball-playing parents, Cheung transferred his sporting affections, aged 10, after he joined a Hong Kong Fencing Association summer course.
He has been going at it full-time since 2014, the year he swapped Lam Tai Fai College for Hong Kong Sports Institute, and, at 17, claimed team foil bronze from the Asian Games. He would pair team silver with individual bronze four years later, while his solo gold three years ago was coupled with another team bronze.
Koenig said that since his first Olympic gold in 2021, Cheung had undertaken “five years of almost non-stop hard training”.
“When you do this, your body tries to tell you, ‘Come on, you should calm down a bit’,” Koenig said. “But I tell all my athletes that everything comes from the brain. Even when you’re tired, if the brain is ready, it will give good information and you’ll be able to push harder.”
Last year, Cheung told the SCMP that he had been “quite tired for the past four years”, a period stretching back to the months before he scythed through a sequence of supposedly superior opponents to claim a shock Olympic gold.
Defending his title in Paris in 2024, when expectations were through the roof, was perhaps the more impressive achievement after Koenig had warned: “When you’re the Olympic champion, you have the maximum pressure, and we have to see how he will handle it.”
On the Olympic front, Cheung is adopting a similar stance to that adopted by Pep Guardiola after he masterminded Manchester City’s treble in 2023.
“No one has won four [Premier League titles] in a row, why don’t we try?” Guardiola asked, immediately bleeding renewed purpose into his squad.
After they duly sealed that fourth straight crown, Guardiola said: “Now I don’t know what exactly the motivation is because it’s difficult to find it when everything is done”.
We are not there with the 29-year-old Cheung just yet. He is enthused by the prospect of becoming the first man to win three Olympic foil golds, but has hinted that regardless of the outcome, the 2028 Games could spell the end of the road.
In the context of what is on the line in Los Angeles in two years, the Asian Games could easily feel like small fry.
“I try to convince him that it’s important, and I think he understands that for Hong Kong, for all of us, it is,” Koenig said. “Deep down, the motivation can’t be the same when you’ve already won. Nor the excitement, you don’t have the eyes of a kid discovering something different. But he’s also calmer.
“We have some fun between us, I tell him that having two Asian Games golds, to go with the two Olympics would be a good thing.”
Koenig said that in Hangzhou in 2023 he had detected on competition day that Cheung was “not in a good mood”.
The coach’s solution was to show his charge the picture of a car he wanted, telling him he would be able to buy it if he won gold.
“He said, ‘Oh, right, let’s go,’” Koenig said. “We’re trying to be serious, but it was a joke between us. A tiny game.
“Sometimes, you need to remind athletes that we have a nice life. When we chit-chat now I remind him how he felt after winning the last Asian Games. I say that this is the feeling he’ll have if he fights hard and finds the motivation for this competition.”
Cheung has usually permitted himself time to rest and enjoy his achievements, falling somewhere between the manner in which fellow fencer Enzo Lefort and Roy Keane celebrated their major triumphs.
Keane, the former Manchester United midfielder, has said that a “fear of letting people down” pursued him throughout his career. After winning silverware, therefore, “the enjoyment was very, very brief, I’m afraid”.
Frenchman Lefort claimed the first of his three Olympic medals, team foil silver, in Rio in 2016.

He stayed in the Brazilian city for nine days afterwards and “partied for eight of them”.
“The day we got the medal, I went to the French house and partied until 6am,” Lefort told the SCMP.
Following his second Olympic gold, the more sober Cheung “took a long break and rested mentally and physically”.
He has acknowledged that he needs to “take care of my body, I have a lot of injuries from overuse”.
“I can’t push him as much as I used to,” Koenig said. “When he was 24 [at the time of his first Olympic triumph], it was easy for me to tell him that, ‘If you work hard, you can achieve this, this and this’.”
“Now he’s achieved this, this and this, so sometimes I have to remind him that he can still do more.”
A quarter-finalist in June’s Asian Championships, Cheung was comfortably beaten by Kirill Borodachev in the last 16 of the following month’s Kerry Fencing World Championships in Hong Kong. He was a team silver medallist in both events.
Koenig told his athletes to go away and forget about fencing for a fortnight after the global event.
“It can be hard to wake up and come to train every day, but he’s training hard to be prepared,” Koenig said. “I’m pretty sure he will find the motivation and his brain will give a good signal when the competition starts.”


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Fencing

Double Olympic champion Cheung Ka-long will be competing in his fourth Asian Games. Photo: Elson Li

Greg Koenig (right) is seeking ways to motivate Cheung Ka-long for the forthcoming Asian Games. Photo: Handout

Enzo Lefort, partied for eight days after claiming team foil silver at the 2016 Olympics. Photo: Edmond So

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John Han poses with the kart that delivered him the 2026 Junior FIA Karting Arrive and Drive Asia-Pacific Championship title. Photo: Elson Li

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Drivers study their karts in the Coloane Karting Track garages. Photo: Elson Li

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Fiji’s Alfreda Fisher (left) takes on the Spanish defence at Kai Tak Youth Sports Ground. Photo: Karma Lo

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Sport

Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s first fencing superstar set for fourth Asian Games but motivation not coming so easily having won it all


Hong Kong’s first fencing superstar set for fourth Asian Games but motivation not coming so easily having won it all.


Hong Kong’s Cheung Ka-long ready to rise to challenge overcome by Djokovic, Guardiola

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Hong Kong’s first fencing superstar set for fourth Asian Games but motivation not coming so easily having won it all

Hong Kong’s first fencing superstar set for fourth Asian Games but motivation not coming so easily having won it all