Letters | The next Siobhan Haughey? First Hong Kong must get young people swimming

Readers discuss the swimming proficiency of Hong Kong youth, what regular people take away from the Olympics, and why the HKU Business School admissions scandal must be seriously addressed

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A child floats at Hammer Hill Road Swimming Pool on May 30. Swimming proficiency should be improved among young people in Hong Kong, both to equip the community with an important skill and to develop future Olympic champions. Photo: Elson Li

Published: 11:30am, 13 Aug 2024

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The remarkable performances of Hong Kong’s athletes, including fencers Vivian Kong Man-wai and Cheung Ka-long and swimmer Siobhan Haughey, at the Paris Olympics have brought a surge of pride and joy across the city. Their achievements showcase Hong Kong’s ability to cultivate world-class sporting talent.

However, a deeper examination of Hong Kong’s sports development shows that more work is needed to translate this Olympic glory into long-term, sustainable success. One area requiring urgent attention is the low swimming proficiency rates among our youth.

Although Hong Kong boasts an abundance of high-quality public and private swimming pools, as well as beaches, a Baptist University survey in 2014 of more than 1,700 secondary school students found that nearly half of respondents were unable to swim. This lack of swimming ability represents a significant missed opportunity, both to develop the next generation of Olympic champions and to equip our community with a crucial life skill.

At Splash Foundation, a non-profit organisation, we are working to address this challenge at the grass-roots level. Partnering with schools, clubs and charities, we run programmes that prioritise water safety and comfort before focusing on stroke technique. This approach recognises that building confidence in the water is a vital precursor to honing athletic prowess.

Hong Kong is well-positioned to become Asia’s swim city. To get there, it must integrate mandatory swimming lessons into secondary school curriculums and require swim competency tests for graduation; expand the mission of the Hong Kong Games to promote grass-roots swimming development; ensure fair access to resources and competitions for promising young swimmers, based on merit rather than connections; devote resources to parent-child swim activities which can foster bonding moments and an early love for the sport; and enact citywide initiatives to celebrate Hong Kong’s natural swimming venues.