A Real Champion

When you talk about famous athletes in Hong Kong, windsurfing diva Lee Lai-shan would most definitely be at the very top of a lot of people's mind. She is the first Hong Kong athlete (which looks and sounds like an oxymoron, just like the phrase "Swiss Navy") to be crowned World Champion and has won all sorts of accolades in international competitions.

And she is also the culprit for discouraging lots of people from becoming parents in Hong Kong when she said in a frighteningly scary TV commercial for an international bank that "it takes $4 million to raise a kid".

After Lee, most people in Hong Kong would name "King Fu" Marco Fu as the second most famous athlete in Hong Kong, for his wonderful exploits in the Caucasian-dominated world of snooker, the highlight of which was his victory in the Premier League Snooker in 2003, and his amazing run into the final four in last year's World Snooker Championship.

Then there is the underrated cyclist Wong Kam-po, in my money the best athlete Hong Kong has produced in many years. After winning all sorts of major trophies in Asian competitions, including winning the gold medal in the road cycling race at the Asian Games in 1998 and 2006, Wong, at the ripe old age of 34, finally became a World Champion when he surprisingly won the 15km scratch race at the World Cycling Championship in Spain recently.

Compared with Lee's international success, Wong's victory is a complete shocker. While windsurfing is a finesse sport which requires more skills than strength and stamina, cycling is an endurance sports which has always been dominated by the physically-stronger Caucasians. While diminutive cyclists from South America (especially Colombia) have snatched major victories from time to time, they have nonetheless benefited greatly by the high altitude on which they train.

Wong though, never enjoys similar benefits since he dropped out of school at the age of 16 and started training full-time. Since his victories have started piling up, he has been attracting attention from top professional teams (like Selle Italia) and was offered the chance to race in some of the most prestigious races as a professional rider. But he turned them down and stay in Hong Kong, to help developing young and promising local riders.

And when he entered the World Championship, he had no intention of racing in the scratch race. Yet he changed his mind at the very last minute and somehow outwitted all his rivals and broke clear in the final laps for an unlikely and improbable victory.

His reward is the much coveted rainbow jersey (which has nothing to do with homosexuality) which he can put on in scratch races this year, and a lukewarm welcome by a small crowd at the Hong Kong International Airport.

That is not what we call a hero's welcome, but I am sure Ah Po won't mind a bit. If he ever does, he would have stopped cycling years ago, and not many people would have noticed. Instead, he stuck at it and finally has won some sorts of international recognition he truly deserves.