I am against the
motion “Hong Kong is a good place to nurture
professional athletes”.
In recent years,
Hong Kong has held several large-scale international
sport competitions. And our athletes got good results in these competitions
too. Thus, some people think that Hong Kong is
a good place to nurture professional athletes. But I strongly believe that Hong
Kong is not a good place to nurture professional athletes because Hong Kong does not have a sporting culture or enough
support for athletes.
The Hong Kong
education policies are one of the factors. The education system in Hong Kong is examination-oriented. Most of the
Hongkongers, especially employers, will only focus on students’ academic
results. Many of them think that sport is not important at all. Also, some
parents will force their children to focus on academic results even if their
children have talents in sports. Our education system
ignores the talents of sports players and is unfavourable to sporting development.
Second, Hong Kong
does not have enough resources or facilities to develop or nurture professional
athletes. Hong Kong only has one organization
– Hong Kong Sports Institute – to nurture athletes.
Although HKSI provides many elite sports projects like badminton, gymnastics
and swimming, they are not enough to provide a
good environment for athletes to have comprehensive training. Hong
Kong also lacks internationally
recognized venues for training. We all know that it is not possible for HKSI to
provide all venues and facilities for each type of sports. So, how can we
nurture professional athletes successfully in
such
an inadequate environment?
Moreover, the
sports atmosphere in Hong Kong is too weak. Hongkongers focus more on work and
business. Not many people are willing to spend time to do sports or have sports
training. Hong Kong emphasizes economic
development but not sports development. Thus, the sports atmosphere in Hong Kong is not strong enough. Furthermore, the sports development in Hong Kong lacks
government support. To obtain qualification to represent Hong
Kong in international events, potential
athletes have to rely on their own resources and
training. This will increase the difficulty for athletes to build up their professionalism in sports.
Critics may argue
that there are good and professional athletes, such as Wong Kam
Po and Lee Wai Sze, in Hong Kong, and this proves that Hong Kong
is a good place to nurture professional athletes. However, the Hong Kong
cycling team is training in Guang Zhou and Shenzhen most of the time due to the
venue problem – Hong Kong does not have a
formal venue for cycling. And this shows that Hong Kong
does not have enough resources, facilities or government support to nurture athletes. Therefore, I believe that Hong
Kong is not a good place to nurture professional athletes.
To sum up, I
strongly believe that Hong Kong is not a good place to nurture professional
athletes. Unless the
government and the authorities formulate a set of comprehensive and long-term
sports development policies to build a perfect platform for our talented
players and athletes, it will still be difficult for
our players to become professional athletes.
Thank you.
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