Meet Hong Kong’s ‘first’ Olympic medallist – Anthony Mosse
Born and raised in Hong Kong, the swimmer won a bronze medal for New Zealand at the 1988 Seoul Olympics – eight years before Lee Lai-shan’s gold in windsurfing
Hong Kong-born swimmer Anthony Mosse would spend lonely nights at a high-altitude ski-lodge dormitory in Salt Lake City waiting for handwritten training notes from a coach he was barred from seeing.
It had not been long since his father – Cathay Pacific pilot Peter Mosse – had passed away. Mosse was grieving, he had no coach and he was alone.
With the 1988 Seoul Olympics around the corner, it was hardly the best physical and mental preparation for a young man who had waited almost two decades for his moment, ever since he first splashed into the pool of the United Services Recreation Club in Kowloon.
I made the decision to return to my training for the Olympics in Canada and one week later, my dad died. It broke my confidence and preparation
In times of hardship, though, family love can lift you from the abyss, no matter how deep. It was a love he could feel emanating from thousands of miles away in New Zealand and it came with a message: His father would not have wanted him to quit.
Weeks later, Mosse climbed out of the Olympic indoor pool in Seoul after the men’s 200 metres butterfly final. He found his mother, Joy, and laid his head on her shoulder. He was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. And he had just won the bronze medal.
His father would have been proud. New Zealanders were proud and Hong Kong was proud. He was Hong Kong’s “first” Olympic medallist. He may have been representing New Zealand but his story started here and Hong Kong swimming is claiming him.
Mosse, now working for Virgin America in San Francisco, talks passionately about the events in his life leading up to the Olympics.