How the Post reported Hong Kong’s first Olympics team
The 1952 Games in Helsinki saw the territory’s swimming team win more hearts than medals
“OLYMPIC SWIMMING – Names of Cynthia Eager and Cheung Kin-man submitted”, announced the headline in the South China Morning Post on August 8, 1951, ahead of the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics.
In 1950, the clubs of the Hong Kong Amateur Swimming Association banded together for a gala to raise HK$10,000 to send the territory’s first Olympians, “seven men, five women, and one coach/manager” to the Games. The effort fell short and on April 9, 1952, under the headline “Olympic Team Confirmed”, the Post reported Cheung and F.X. “Sonny” Monteiro would “compete in the 100, 400 and 1,500 metres free style, Cynthia Eager in the Women’s 100 and 400 metres free style, and Irene Kwok in the Women’s 200 metres breast strokes.”
Pride swelled with a July 9 headline, “H.K. Swimming Contingent Leaves Today – FIRST TIME IN HISTORY” and, in a sign of the times, the story noted the contingent was “taking to Helsinki a number of ivory ‘chops’ with the names of Games officials engraved in Chinese for presentation to these officials as a gift from Hong Kong”.