Tokyo 2020 Olympics: who are Hong Kong’s past medallists and where are they now?

Never before has Hong Kong entered an Olympic Games with so many potential medal winners. The city has won three medals in its history, with the 2020 Tokyo Games offering athletes a chance to match or even surpass the existing medal record spanning 69 years.

Four female athletes – cyclist Sarah Lee Wai-sze, fencer Vivian Kong Man-wai, swimmer Siobhan Haughey and karate exponent Grace Lau Mo-sheung – are among Hong Kong’s biggest Tokyo medal hopes.

But it was not always so optimistic; hopes were often restrained for Hong Kong’s forays. That all changed in 1996 when windsurfer Lee Lai-shan, who had already won a world championship, went to the Atlanta Games with high hopes. She duly won a gold medal, Hong Kong’s first of any colour, to establish herself as a local legend. Since then, table tennis men’s double pair Ko Lai-chak and Li Ching won silver at the 2004 Athens Games, while Sarah Lee took bronze in the women’s keirin at London 2012.

Had Lee Lai-shan listened to her rivals, she would have given up windsurfing early in her career. Years before “San San” became a world-class sailor, Hong Kong athletes were predominantly overlooked. At one international competition, a rival European coach reportedly told Lee’s former coach Rene Appel to stop taking his athletes to big events because they were simply not good enough. Appel had always refused to name names. “He later apologised,” Appel said after Lee dominated the windsurfing at the 1996 Atlanta Games to etch her name as Hong Kong’s first and (so far) only Olympic gold medallist.