Hong Kong gold rush continues in Turkmenistan as Chan Kin-lok claims butterfly title

Chan Kin-lok attributed her steady diet of World Cup races for her gold medal-winning performance in the 100 metres butterfly in the short course swimming at the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in Turkmenistan on Saturday evening.

Chan touched out China’s Sun Meichen by just a tenth of a second to win gold in a time of 58.15 seconds to cap a successful day for Hong Kong as Toto Wong Kwan-to and the women’s relay team claimed silver medals in the 50 metres backstroke and the 4x100 freestyle relay respectively.

“I feel really happy and proud to represent Hong Kong and to get a gold medal,” said Chan, who was part of relay team that won gold in the 4x50 metres medley relay on Friday evening.

“I think I really did very well in these games and I’m really happy about that. I was more excited yesterday because I was with my teammates and we got a Games record, but I’m still happy with my gold medal today.”

Chan trailed Sun and South Korea’s Park Ye-rin at the halfway turn but a strong second half of the race saw the 23-year-old claw her way back into contention and she pipped the Chinese swimmer to the gold when she hit the finish perfectly to stop the clock first.

“I’ve done a lot of World Cup races, so I’ve done a lot of work on my turns,” said Chan. “I wasn’t sprinting so well in the first 50 so I knew I’d have to go quicker in the second 50.

“I’ve done a lot of races in short course events and that’s been good training for this, how to do better turns and touch.”