Hong Kong elite athletes wowed the city with their top-notch sports prowess and the contagious Lion Rock spirit in the recently completed Tokyo Olympic Games. This bumper achievement signals that our city has come a long way in professional sports and may bode well for a promising future in the sports field. But there are hurdles, financially and culturally, as well as objective constraints, to contend with before putting us on the sports map.
Sports training, especially for up-and-coming athletes, requires sophisticated professional equipment, and a facility spacious enough for athletes to flex their muscles to the fullest. For Hong Kong, where residents are jostling for more storage space in their flats and more legroom in the restaurants, a well-fitted facility for sports training is hard to come by
Hong Kong is notoriously known for its land-deficiency issue, which infiltrates and restrains every aspect of life. Space and ancillary facilities are part and parcel of sports training. Without them, it’s like a gifted painter with flights of imagination and muses but without brush and canvas. Sports training, especially for up-and-coming athletes, requires sophisticated professional equipment, and a facility spacious enough for athletes to flex their muscles to the fullest. For Hong Kong, where residents are jostling for more storage space in their flats and more legroom in the restaurants, a well-fitted facility for sports training is hard to come by.
Making use of the sports facilities available in citywide schools and colleges is a viable and cost-effective way to go. The Opening up School Facilities for Promotion of Sports Development Scheme, launched by the Education Bureau and the Home Affairs Bureau in the 2017-18 school year, encourages schools boasting such resources to hire out their sports venues and activity rooms to sports organizations during weekends, school holidays and after-school hours on weekdays. However, only 21 percent of the eligible sports institutions benefited from the ready-to-use premises during the school year, for training or sports events. The utilization rate isn’t even remotely optimal.
What held them back from utilizing the facilities is, according to members of the Legislative Council, the fact that schools charge more than the facilities under the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. After all, running a professional sports facility requires maintenance, which is costly. In Hong Kong, becoming an athlete who is outstanding enough to compete on the international arena one has to withstand a baptism by fire. It’s physically taxing and can’t guarantee the desired outcome in spite of one’s dedication. The presumption that being an athlete in Hong Kong is not a high-paying job reinforces the idea that it’s not a coveted career trajectory.
As such, in Hong Kong, a child with a keen passion and potential for sports who aspires to an athletic path is likely to be greeted with his or her parents’ strong objection. Local parents uniformly expect their children to be a lawyer, doctor, financier, or teacher, as they are regarded as the most secure and prestigious professions and define success. The mindset is so entrenched in the city that it limits the youths’ career options, and without the mindset, hundreds of children could have been stellar athletes.
You may find the misleading bias pretty lame if you know the financial support and monetary rewards to Hong Kong elite athletes provided by the government, which is pretty generous compared with other regions. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced before the Tokyo Olympics that athletes who won a gold medal in individual events would win HK$5 million ($642,000), and silver and bronze medalists would win HK$2.5 million and HK$1 million respectively. Athletes who won gold medals in group events would be awarded HK$10 million.
The cost involved in training routines is significantly shouldered by the government in form of the Elite Training Grant, under the government’s Individual Athletes Support Scheme. It’s estimated an elite athlete in Hong Kong could earn HK$41,030, 1.23 times higher than the median monthly wage of HK$18,400.
The benefits of regular physical activity to the youth’s physical and mental fitness have been widely recognized. It helps boost a child’s self-esteem and self-confidence, which can be translated into their academic attempts; it shapes resilience and stamina in a child, which supports him or her to cope with adversity and confront failure with a smile; it instills discipline in a child, who can learn to practice restraint and follow rules in communities. Nevertheless, the rewards of physical exercise seem to be largely ignored in Hong Kong.
A 2019 report by the Chinese University of Hong Kong revealed a disturbingly low grade in physical fitness among the local children compared with their counterparts in other Asian regions. The chasm in children’s physical activity was even more glaring between Hong Kong and some European economies.
Overwhelmingly occupied with schoolwork, children in the city have little time to hit the playground, which, together with the parental obsession with academic performance, also explains why the route of becoming an athlete or even choosing a sports-related occupation is off the beaten path in the city.
If Hong Kong is ambitious to carve out fame for its attainment in sports, society has to undergo a fundamental shift in its notion about physical activity first. The government and stakeholders in the sports and leisure sector are responsible for promoting the benefits of physical activity in youth, enforcing compulsory physical education lessons in the school curriculum.
To galvanize more youngsters to pursue a sports dream and nurture more athletes of world-level finesse, Hong Kong may want to collaborate with mainland cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area on joint athlete training programs. The abundant land in the adjacent region, complete with seasoned coaches, is a fertile ground for creating a breed of Hong Kong sports stars.
The author is a Hong Kong-based journalist.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.