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Ada Li

China’s Wu Yanni is one of Asia’s most recognisable athletes, a hurdler known for her speed, confidence and trademark race-day make-up.
Less well known is the person behind her rise: Hong Kong coach Ivan Ho Kwan-lung, who has worked as Wu’s strength and conditioning coach since 2023, and also oversees the development of several of the city’s brightest young sprinters.
Ho, a former Hong Kong Olympian, has spent years trying to narrow the gap between local athletes and their Asian rivals through a more scientific, individualised approach to sprint training.
A Sydney 2000 Olympian, Ho retired after the 2002 Busan Asian Games before moving into education. He later earned a master’s degree in information technology from the University of Warwick, then returned to Hong Kong to study sports science and physical education at the University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Institute of Education and the Chinese University of Hong Kong while coaching school teams.
When Ho met Wu in Shanghai on the eve of Chinese New Year in 2023, Ho said he could immediately see that her starting mechanics needed work.

“When I first met her, she did not have a good start,” Ho said. “I began by working with her on strength and conditioning, including lifting and movement patterns, because her mechanics were not quite right. I also helped adjust her starting position.”
The next day, Wu and Ho happened to meet veteran coach Loren Seagrave, whose assessment of her start reinforced Ho’s view and helped cement their partnership.
Since then, Ho has travelled regularly to work with Wu, bringing updated ideas and training methods into their sessions.
“I try to give Wu updated knowledge, and at the same time teach her how to move better from the blocks.”
Ho said Wu was very different away from the camera: far from the confident, outspoken athlete seen in public.
“She gets excited in front of the camera, but in training she is willing to listen and work hard,” Ho said.
For the coach, sprinting is not just about raw power, but about how efficiently force is produced and applied. “Sprinting is about how much force you can produce, and how fast you can produce it,” he said.
That approach has shaped both Wu’s progress and Ho’s wider coaching work in Hong Kong.
Ho now works with a multidisciplinary support team that includes physiotherapists and strength coaches, while also guiding a growing group of young sprinters who have begun to make their mark.

He helped identify Alton Kwok Chun-ting and Chan Yat-lok in the early stages of their running careers, and later brought together athletes such as Jasper Koo Cheuk-fung, South Korea’s Jun Chaemin and Singapore national record holder Kerstin Ong Jing-rong.
Ho believes Asian athletes can close the gap on stronger sprinting nations, but only if training is tailored to body type and movement patterns rather than copied blindly.
“Blindly following the muscle and strength training of Black athletes may only lead to brute force and not efficient training,” he said. “I spend time studying how to adapt those methods for Asian athletes.”
His young sprinters have already reached major championships and broken records, but Ho said they were still developing. He believed Hong Kong’s men could continue to raise the standard, with the city’s all-age 100m record of 10.27 seconds in sight.
“Based on our training data, at least four of our athletes have the ability to challenge times in the 10.2s,” he said. “The women’s side is also getting close to the Hong Kong record. But records depend on timing, conditions and peaking on the day.”

Despite the progress, Ho said Hong Kong still faced structural challenges not faced by countries such as Japan and mainland China.
“In some countries, young athletes do not need to go to school and can train full time, sometimes up to 11 sessions a week,” he said. “Hong Kong and Singapore are different – parents still care a lot about academics, so athletes often have to balance training with tutoring and schoolwork.”
Ho said facilities were also a major issue, with many overseas students able to train on school campuses before and after class, while Hong Kong athletes often had to travel to dedicated sports grounds.
Even so, Ho remained optimistic.
“Hong Kong sprinting has improved in recent years,” Ho said, and his long-term target remains as ambitious as ever: producing the city’s first sub-10-second sprinter.
“I’ve always been chasing the same question: can a Hong Kong athlete run under 10 seconds?” Ho said. “I just want to see how far we can go.”
He added that if Hong Kong could produce several sprinters capable of running in the low 10s, the city could one day qualify for the Olympics in the men’s 4x100m relay.
“These sprinters are still young and have a lot of room to improve,” Ho said.


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Former Olympian Ivan Ho, who has been Wu’s strength and conditioning coach since 2023, says he wants to see how fast local sprinters can go


Former Olympian Ivan Ho, who has been Wu’s strength and conditioning coach since 2023, says he wants to see how fast local sprinters can go.


Wu Yanni

Hong Kong coach behind hurdler Wu Yanni aiming to develop city’s first sub-10s sprinter

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Former Olympian Ivan Ho, who has been Wu’s strength and conditioning coach since 2023, says he wants to see how fast local sprinters can go

Former Olympian Ivan Ho, who has been Wu’s strength and conditioning coach since 2023, says he wants to see how fast local sprinters can go