The 2024 Paris Olympics was one to remember for Hong Kong. The city won four medals at this year’s Games – two gold and two bronze – making this our most successful Olympics to date. Fencers Cheung Ka-long and Vivian Kong each won gold in their categories while swimming superstar Siobhan Haughey won two bronze medals. How much do you know about these hometown heroes? Check out seven things you might not have known about this year’s Olympic medal winners.
1. Vivian Kong considered retiring before the Paris Games
Kong’s path to the gold medal hasn’t been the easiest. In 2017, she tore her left ACL, short for anterior cruciate ligament, a ligament in the knee that prevents the shin bone from moving forward on the thigh bone. It’s not uncommon for the injury to require surgery, and it can take six to nine months to recover! Then, in 2019, she tore her right ACL. Because of these two injuries, she considered retiring. But she persevered, winning her first gold medal this year at age 30. It was her third appearance at the Olympics.
2. Hong Kong and the Ka-long effect
After fencer Cheung Ka-long entered the global stage by winning his first Olympic gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 games (held in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic), there was a massive surge in popularity for the sport. Hong Kong residents were abuzz about the then 24-year-old Cheung, who won the city’s first Olympic gold medal since 1996. Many of the city’s fencing schools reported a sudden rise in the number of kids and parents wanting to take up lessons; this has since been dubbed the “Ka-long effect”.
3. Siobhan Haughey the record breaker
At the 2021 World Short Course Championships (25m long pool), Siobhan Haughey set the 200m freestyle record with an insane time of 1:50.31 minutes, making her the first Hong Kong swimmer to claim a word title as well as a world record. She continued dominating the world of aquatics, winning two bronze medals in Paris, and she is the first Hong Kong athlete to win two Olympic medals in any sport.
4. Vivian Kong’s charity work
Kong announced her retirement from fencing shortly after winning her gold medal, and she is now looking at a different career; she hopes to one day work for the United Nations. Having graduated from Stanford with a degree in international relations, she is now studying for a Juris Doctor degree at the Faculty of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Kong is also an activist who promotes several charitable causes. During the Covid-19, she helped single-parent families and children with special needs access much-needed supplies.
After returning to the city from Paris, Kong told reporters she hoped to set up a charity or a social enterprise with the HK$6 million bonus she would receive from a Hong Kong Jockey Club grant rewarding Olympic gold medallists.
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5. Vivian Kong with Team Canada?
Kong lived in Canada from ages two to six, eventually returning to Hong Kong, where she picked up fencing. Canada, seeing her potential, offered her naturalised citizenship so she would represent them. Kong refused, saying she only wanted to represent her birthplace.
6. Cheung Ka-long’s pets
How much do you know about Cheung Ka-long’s collection of pets? He has four cats – three American shorthairs and one ragdoll – and a pet ferret! It seems like his favourite might be his two-year-old cat Zimba, who you can spot on his Instagram page.
7. Siobhan Haughey didn’t like swimming at first
As a child, Haughey and her older sister – who would later swim competitively, too – took swimming lessons together. However, Haughey disliked the sport when she was young, saying the training was too extreme. Despite this, her coaches saw her talent and implored her parents to keep her in the sport. This decision paid off, and she eventually came to love swimming and the success that came with it when she was around 18 years old.
