Win puts Wong back on track

On the rebound from a family bereavement and a poor race in Los Angeles last week, Wong Kam-po made no mistake yesterday as he won the men's points race in the Hong Kong Track Championships at Sha Tin's Sports Institute velodrome.

The 34-year-old veteran collected 80 valuable Olympic qualifying points in the 30km, 120-lap race, beating 18 domestic rivals to the title. Promising youngster Kwok Ho-ting was second and Doha Asian Games champion Cheung King-wai third.

'I am quite happy with the performance today. After all, it was less than a week after returning from Los Angeles,' said Wong. He failed to make the final of the World Cup Classic in California and so missed out on the plentiful qualifying points on offer at the top-grade event.

Wong's poor performance in Los Angeles may, in part, have been due to news of the death of his father shortly before the competition.

Yesterday's race was specially staged by the Hong Kong Cycling Association to afford Wong the chance to accrue points.

'The World Cup result was far from ideal, but if I can keep focused in the remaining competitions, I'm confident of qualifying for Beijing,' he said.

'There is still the final World Cup event in Copenhagen and the world championships in Manchester before the Olympic qualifiers end in April. It's not going to be easy as everyone will be working towards making the games,' said Wong.

'He needs to finish in the top 10 in the last two world events in order to qualify,' said coach Shen Jinkang.

Wong Wan-yiu won the women's points race yesterday - which gives her 12 world ranking points.