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Texting Carrie Lam: how Marco Fu raised snooker’s multimillion-dollar question with Hong Kong leader
- Quarantined ace opts for a direct approach to grab the attention of the city’s chief executive, who acknowledges Fu’s message in Facebook post
- Cue sports could lose 80 per cent of their funding from 2023, with grants to players halved, governing body says
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Not many people can claim to have a head of government’s digits in their phone contacts, but Marco Fu Ka-chun is one.
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Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has said she was alerted to a financial crisis for snooker when she received a text message about it from the city’s most famous player.
Cue sports face losing most of their public funding from next year, slashing support to players including three-time ranking event winner Fu and three-time women’s world champion Ng On-yee – a point made to Hong Kong’s leader when Fu contacted her personally.
“I received a text message from Marco Fu,” Lam said in a Facebook post that discussed funding of Hong Kong sports.
Fu was in quarantine at a hotel in Hong Kong after travelling to the UK to take part in the World Championship, in which he has twice been a semi-finalist. He bowed out in the qualifying stages, but has returned home to arguably a sterner test, with cue sports in danger of losing Tier A status under the Hong Kong Sports Institute (HKSI).
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