Asian Winter Games: speed skater Sidney Chu hails ‘breakthrough’ for Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s speed skaters have tended to follow their own paths when it comes to high-profile competitions, which made this month’s Asian Winter Games something of an outlier.

When Sidney Chu carried the city’s flag at the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, he was the sole exponent of his craft and one of just three Hong Kong athletes taking part, alongside alpine skiers Adrian Yung and Audrey King.

It was the largest delegation the city had ever sent to the winter multi-sport event.

Often outnumbered by officials, coaches and other non-competing members of the delegation, the city’s short-track speed skaters were the first to represent Hong Kong at a Winter Olympics, when Cordia Tsoi and Christy Ren did so in 2002 in Salt Lake.

They were followed by Han Yueshuang in 2006 and Barton Lui Pan-to eight years later, but it has primarily been a solitary existence, and this is what has made the past week in Harbin so special, especially for Chu, who at 25 has represented Hong Kong for the past 10 years.

This month, though, he has been one of six competing in the sport’s two disciplines, and Hong Kong also had – for the first time – enough speed skaters for two team relay events. And when Lam Ching-yan held the city’s flag aloft last week, 73 athletes followed.