LettersHong Kong can provide its snowboarders with a route to success
Readers discuss how the city can support its snowboarders, former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa’s contributions, and the AI poses
Hong Kong sent four athletes to the Winter Olympics in February, its largest team ever, and 74 to the Asian Winter Games in Harbin the year before, also a record. Neither delegation contained a snowboarder, however – and the old explanation no longer holds.
Guangzhou now has a 75,000 square metre (807,293 square feet) indoor snow park with a covered alpine track of about 400 metres. For parallel snowboard racing, which involves gates on short courses, the Guangzhou track is a usable training venue within a day’s trip from the city, which no earlier generation of our racers had.
The frameworks exist too. In March last year, the Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Heilongjiang Sports Federation and Harbin Sport University on joint training and talent development. Last November, Hong Kong joined a four-party agreement with the General Administration of Sport of China, Guangdong and Macau covering youth and athlete exchange. As far as I know, no snow sport programme has been announced under either.