CHU FINALLY LIVING OUT HIS DREAMS

Hong Kong speed skater overcomes poor facilities and a bad injury in sealing place at Beijing Games

At just 22 and heading for next month’s Beijing Winter Olympics, Hong Kong short-track speed skater Sidney Chu has his best competitive years ahead.

But becoming one of the city’s top skaters has already taken a toll.

Whether training abroad to make up for the lack of standardised local rinks, recovering from a nasty fractured foot in his teens, or undergoing three weeks’ quarantine for a pre-Olympic Hong Kong pit stop to promote the sport, Chu has been through it all.

“Starting out in this sport in Hong Kong – a place that doesn’t snow or have ice – it feels like all that pain, trouble and hassle is finally worth it,” said Hong Kongborn Chu, who qualified for the Beijing Games last month.

A keen ice hockey player in his youth, Chu eventually found a substitute for the thrill and exhilaration he felt from chasing pucks.

“I really liked going fast on the ice, but as I approached 11-12 years old, puberty hits at different times for people,” the former Hong Kong International School student recalled. “I found myself playing with a whole bunch of these huge Canadian white guys – and I’m just a scrawny little Asian kid.

“There were these weekly speedskating classes for beginners and I immediately fell in love after joining. I started the sport kind of late, so I tried to play catch-up as much as possible. I would go abroad to hone my skills – a lot of travelling back and forth between China and Salt Lake City.”

Breaking into the Hong Kong skating set-up, Chu outlined his Olympic dreams after watching skater, friend and “role model” Barton Lui Pan-to – the first Hong Kong man to compete at a Winter Olympics at Sochi 2014.

“Watching him on TV, and knowing him on a personal level, further inspired me. He’s a person who grew up in Hong Kong, who skated with similar resources that I did, and still excelled at the Olympic level. It was like if he could do it, so can I,” Chu said.

It looked as though Chu was heading for a dream Olympic berth at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. Then it all appeared to come tumbling down.

“I broke my ankle. Three different spots. The common procedure the doctors gave me for the best path to recovery was to take four and-a-half months out, then going into walking and simple exercises,” Chu said.

“But we had World Cup qualifiers in just two and-a-half months. So I made a decision then that I wasn’t going to follow the normal risk-recovery prescription and was really going to do as much physiotherapy as I could to get back on the ice, regardless of whether I qualified or not.”

By then, Chu was under the guidance of now Hong Kong head coach Sun Dandan, a two-time Olympic silver medallist and Asian Games gold medallist.

“I drew a lot of inspiration from Sun because she had the exact same injury to her left foot, and the exact same two-month time frame for the 2002 Winter Olympics, where she won a silver with a relay team,” Chu said.

“That whole process of the recovery and fighting through pain, even when you know it’s uncertain, developed my resilience and results. I learned how much the sport meant to me. How much the Olympics meant to me.

“Even though I wasn’t able to make it in 2018, I was still able to skate with the world’s best, and I wasn’t necessarily very far behind. That experience mentally has made me a better athlete.”

Chu won silver in the 100m and bronze in the 5,000m relay at the Asian Championships a year later. He also began a biology degree at George Washington University in the US, which he chose based on proximity to US national team’s facilities.

“I was able to train for two or three years which helped me improve a lot,” he said. “Then coming back to Hong Kong, being stuck in the pandemic, made things a little worse. There’s still potential there to improve, but I think my peak and our four-year training cycle has been hindered.

“Especially in short-track, you really have to have an understanding of other team strategies and dynamics. It’s not something that can be done through just watching YouTube videos.

After six weeks’ travelling between World Cups in Beijing, Nagoya, Budapest, Debrechen and Dordrecht – amid injuries, Covid-19 scares and costly blade replacements – Chu is about to fulfil a long-held dream.

On Hong Kong facilities, he said: “There’s been a lot of improvement. But the reason it seems like a broken record [that Hong Kong does not have resources] is because it wasn’t there during the critical time – when the Hong Kong team really needed it,” Chu said.

“We have two new ice rinks that are closer to the standardised size. I have a lot of optimism we’ll have more interest in the sport.”

I learned how much the sport meant to me ... how much the Olympics meant to me SIDNEY CHU