Hong Kong eager for more sporting success

City aims to improve on six medals won by delegation to Tokyo 2020 Olympics

After years of hard work, 14-year-old Uhi Viviena Marise finally became a member of the Hong Kong swimming team, but this achievement was far from easy.

With a father from New Zealand and a mother from Hong Kong, she started swimming lessons when she was 3, but her parents never expected her to progress so well.

They merely wanted her to become stronger and a proficient swimmer, a skill that could be useful in the future. However, their daughter has a passion for swimming and is now just one step away from the top level of the sports pyramid in Hong Kong.

"Swimming has always been my love, rather than studying," the teenager said, adding that her parents had no problem with her priorities.

She used to train from 5:30 am to 7 am and then went to school until 4:30 pm. After class she returned to the pool for another two-and-a-half hours' training, before rushing off to do her homework, which she had to complete quickly in order to make an early start the next day.

However, since starting middle school, she has gradually realized the importance of studying and has tried to catch up with her academic work due to the upcoming Junior Secondary Education Assessment and the Diploma of Secondary Education Examination－her entry ticket to college.

Uhi was thrilled when she learned she had won a place on the city's swimming team, but knew this was just the start of the next stage of the journey to becoming a professional athlete.

Her idol is newly crowned Olympic silver medalist Siobhan Haughey, with whom she has much in common, as Haughey, who is half Irish and half Chinese, was also born in Hong Kong.

Uhi is about 1.70 meters tall, which gives her a physical advantage in swimming, while Haughey, 23, is also tall and has been dubbed the "mixed-race mermaid".

When Uhi set out to follow Haughey in representing Hong Kong, she knew she faced a number of challenges.

For example, when the pandemic struck early last year, the Hong Kong Open Swimming Championships, which offer the chance of representing the city at the sport－had to be called off.

Those with ambitions of making it on to the team usually have to rank in the top three at these championships, which are held two to three times a year, but which only resumed in August, according to Uhi's swimming coach, Wu Kim-ho.

Immediately before the onset of the pandemic, Uhi performed a personal best, finishing second in a total field of about 50 swimmers in another local 100 meters freestyle event in January last year, recording a time of 1 min 01:93 sec.

Still, she has a long way to go if she wants to surpass Haughey, who set an Asian record for this event by finishing in 52.27 at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this summer.

But Uhi's coach and her swimming club－the Hoi Tin Athletic Association－believe her competition results and performances stand her in good stead, so they applied to the Hong Kong China Swimming Association for her to represent the city.

The association referred the application to the Hong Kong Sports Institute, or HKSI, which examined it. Even though Uhi had not been able to take part in the open championships, she was considered eligible to join the city's swimming team. Since then, she has trained at the institute.