Asian Track Cycling Championships: Ceci Lee claims Hong Kong’s first medal but pipped to gold again by Japanese nemesis
- She makes podium in women’s elimination race, while Lee Yan-ho bags bronze in junior scratch race for second Hong Kong success
- City’s riders seek to bring winning mentality back home before Hong Kong hosts UCI Nations Cup
Ceci Lee Sze-wing finished second behind Japanese flier Yumi Kajihara in the women’s elimination race to claim Hong Kong’s first medal of the Asian Track Cycling Championships in India.
Olympic star Kajihara beat Lee to omnium gold at last year’s Asian Games, and the 22-year-old Hongkonger was unable to exact revenge for that result in her opening event of the six-day championships.
Lee is embarking on the biggest year of her embryonic career, with qualification for the Paris Olympics the primary objective.
A three-week team training camp in Melbourne, devised by acting head coach Herve Dagorne, provided Lee with a series of no-holds-barred races, featuring large fields and male rivals, in preparation for a relentless period of competition.
She is chasing an elusive gold medal in Delhi, after bagging two silvers and one bronze at the Hangzhou Asiad.
Lee’s 2023 Asian Track Championships, in Malaysia, yielded omnium silver and scratch race bronze. Both of those events were won by her nemesis Kajihara, whose omnium silver at the Tokyo Olympics was the first Games medal won by a woman cyclist from her country.
