Hong Kong Football Club Junior Soccer coaches smash island loop in under seven hours for charity
- HKFC Junior Soccer club coaches trek around Hong Kong Island anticlockwise for KELY Support Group
- Loop the Island organiser Martin Cerullo, who is also a coach at the club, says kids’ mental health is paramount right now during the pandemic
Martin Cerullo said running around Hong Kong Island is quite the experience.
The Hong Kong Football Club Junior Soccer coach did so in exceptional time, six hours and 24 minutes, along with a select few other coaches, all for charity. Cerullo said the 6o-kilometre trek, which they did clockwise, that has more than a 1,000 metres of elevation change is something he will never forget.
“Where it starts to get a bit busier is around Wong Chuk Hang through to Aberdeen when you’re along the fish market and you’re dodging in and out of trolleys being pushed with fish in them, and trucks coming in and out and there’s water spraying everywhere,” said Cerullo, who set out at 5am from the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club on March 27.
“It’s such an amazing route, what you see of Hong Kong, the contrast, the city, fishing ports, glistening buildings in Central, semi-industrial, through to Stanley and Big Wave Bay, you see everything of Hong Kong in one loop.”
Cerullo was joined by 13 other coaches with the HKFC Junior Soccer club for the first annual Loop the Island, which has already raised HK$100,000 for KELY Support Group, a non-profit which focuses on mental health for kids. Cerullo said there were three groups of coaches who completed the loop in various times, his group, one that did it in eight hours and 42 minutes, one that did it in 11 hours and the final group who did it in 12 hours and 25 minutes.
All four groups finished at the HKFC training grounds in Happy Valley, doing a celebratory lap around the field. The location of all the runners was also posted on the big screen scoreboard for the kids to watch as their coaches completed the gruelling loop. The initiative was part of a bigger month-long fundraiser which saw HKFC Junior football players, coaches, families and friends trek a combined 6,206 kilometres, which works out to 103 loops of the island.
