Triumphant Special Olympics team begins the journey home
Hong Kong's triumphant Special Olympics team began their journey home from Ireland yesterday afternoon, missing the climax of the Games, last night's closing ceremony.
Flights from Dublin to London were fully booked and last-minute attempts to get them on later flights were abandoned because it would have meant dividing the intellectually disabled youngsters into small groups which team manager Fay Ho Kim-fai was loath to do.
'The athletes are very disappointed and it is a shame having to miss the closing ceremony but there is no alternative,' Ms Ho said.
The athletes also needed to be rested for the government's special reception in their honour tomorrow at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, she added. The party of 33 athletes and coaches had to split into two groups of 15 and 18 for the hour-long flights to London.
They were then reunited at London's Heathrow airport for the 12-hour flight home and are due to touch down at Chek Lap Kok this afternoon.
The team managed to fit in one last event yesterday morning - the 4x100 metres mixed relay in which they won a bronze medal - before dashing to Dublin airport.
After outstanding performances and a virtual clean sweep in gymnastics, Hong Kong's final medal haul was 31 gold, 13 silver and six bronze achieved by 22 athletes.
The team returns with more than just medals to show for their time away. As part of the Games' Healthy Athlete programme, all teams were given free eye tests, dental, skin, feet and hearing checks by volunteer doctors. The official accompanying the China team said for the 34 mainland athletes it was the first time many had had such medical checks.
Healthy Athletes commissioner Deirdre Foley Woods said people with learning difficulties were significantly under-screened compared with the rest of the population, even in developed countries. The medical checks had actually saved the sight of two athletes. One, Sopon Ketkao, a 29-year-old table tennis player from Thailand, did not realise his sight was failing.
The coach who travelled with him had known him for only one month and had not noticed any deterioration, but the Dublin eye specialists found glaucoma had already robbed him of sight in one eye and was threatening the other.
He was referred to Dublin's Mater Hospital for immediate treatment. Doctors there have already begun making arrangements to ensure this continues in Thailand.
The most moving aspect about the thousands who thronged the Healthy Athletes facility was that so many had problems which blighted their lives - such as poor sight - that could easily be fixed, Ms Foley Woods said.
She said the story of an American athlete who put on glasses for the first time and shrieked 'Mom, I can see you, you're so beautiful', illustrated the point.
