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Hong Kong
OpinionComment
Ken Chu
Ken Chu

Opinion | Tokyo Olympics: should Hong Kong pour more money into the quest for medals?

  • While some argue that funding translates into Olympic success, other factors, such as population, culture and geography, play a role
  • Hong Kong should invest more in fostering a love of sports early in children, which will translate into better public health and might also boost the economy

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Chief Executive Carrie Lam attends a flag presentation ceremony for the Hong Kong delegation to Tokyo Olympics at Government House on July 8. Photo: Pool Picture
Ken Chu
The Tokyo Olympics are just around the corner. Among the Olympic hopefuls who have started on their journey to Tokyo is our windsurfing team, who became the first batch of Hong Kong athletes to arrive in Japan.
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But the Tokyo Olympics, which were delayed for a year, are fraught with challenges because of Covid-19. Japan’s minister for the Olympics announced last week that spectators would not be admitted to Olympics venues in Tokyo to curb the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus. Let’s hope that the absence of spectators to cheer on the athletes will not affect their performance.
Over the years, four athletes from Hong Kong have won Olympic medals – in windsurfing, table tennis and cycling – but the last time a Hong Kong athlete won an Olympic gold was in 1996. Yet, this can be considered remarkable given the relatively small amount of public funding devoted to sports development compared to economically affluent cities and countries globally.

Some studies have revealed a strong relationship between state investment and funding and medals won in international sports competitions, including the Olympic Games. Some scholars have argued that sustained public investment is a vital factor in nurturing great athletes to compete in international sport events.

The world’s top sporting countries, such as the US, China, UK, Australia, Russia and Germany, invariably spend substantial amounts of money annually on nurturing athletes and developing training facilities.

However, money is not the sole factor in sporting success. For example, Luxembourg, whose gross domestic product per capita is almost 2.5 times that of ours and around twice that of the US, has so far won only one Olympian gold medal.

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Some argue that the more populous a country is, the more likely it is to nurture world-class athletes because it has a larger pool of people to choose from and train. China, one of the world’s top sporting nations, is clearly a case in point. But some populous countries do not consistently produce many Olympic medallists.

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China’s Tokyo Olympics delegation will be nation’s biggest yet for an international sporting event

China’s Tokyo Olympics delegation will be nation’s biggest yet for an international sporting event
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