Hunt for Olympic berths ‘will go down to the wire’
Head coach Andrew Wright believes the race to qualify for the Paris Olympics “will go down to the wire”, despite Jason Ng Tai-long producing a career-best finish at the Asia Triathlon Championships yesterday.
Ng’s time of one hour, 57 minutes and 45 seconds was only good enough for sixth in Hatsukaici, Japan, with Asian Games gold medallist Kenji Nener winning on home soil in 1:53.51.
The Hongkonger’s effort kept him ahead of Kazakhstan rival Ayan Beisenbayev, who finished in eighth, nine seconds back, but China’s Fan Junjie put himself in contention for the “new flag” place they are all chasing by coming home in third.
Robin Elg has an outside chance as well, crossing the line three seconds behind Ng, while compatriot Mark Yu Shing-him was 10th, a further 22 seconds adrift.
With five weeks to go before the qualification period ends, Wright said he would need to go through the results today before deciding on the next steps.
“Qualification is still wide open,” the Hong Kong head coach said. “Fan will now be in contention also after his third-placed finish. The China programme is going from strength to strength and they outperformed us today.”
The next races circled on the calendar for the Hong Kong team are the Asia Triathlon Cup in Taizhou, Zhejiang on May 11, followed by another cup event in Lianyungang, Jiangsu, a week later.
A newly added cup event in Kazakhstan will be held at Burabay on May 24, three days before the qualification rankings cut off.
“Most likely we will have to do the two China races and then hopefully we won’t have to do the Kazakh one,” Wright said. “But it all depends on how they do.”
Host athlete Nener was unstoppable yesterday, and broke away from the run to finish more than a minute ahead of compatriot Takumi Hojo.
Fan finished in 1:56.26, with countryman Ma Yunxiang fourth and Japan’s Aoba Yasumatsu rounding out the top five.
Ng, who finished fourth at the continental sprint championships in Dexing a fortnight ago, was 15th after two laps of the 750m swim, but had improved to eighth by the second transition.
He overhauled two more opponents during the 10km run, to better the seventh place he managed in 2021, when the event was also held in Hatsukaichi.
Three other Hongkongers finished in the lower half of the 32-men field. Hung Tik-long ranked 17th, while Yip Tak-long and Nicholas Tsang Cheung-sing were 23rd and 27th, respectively.
In the women’s event, Hong Kong’s Bailee Brown finished in 2:11.17 to rank 12th among the 27 athletes. Veteran Hilda Choi Yan-yin finished in 19th place, some four minutes behind Brown, while Cade Wright was 21st.
Yuko Takahashi of Japan was the outright winner in 2:05.56, with Chinese pair Lin Xinyu and Yang Yifan, who came in less than a minute behind, rounding out the top three in a carbon copy of the podium from the women’s individual race at last year’s Asian Games.