With rigorous training, a strict diet and a touch of espionage, waiters yesterday showed just how fast they can move.
Well, perhaps there was no diet involved, but participants in the Hong Kong Waiters' Race for charity took the 250-metre course through Centenary Garden in Tsim Sha Tsui East very seriously indeed.
'Every year you practise for two months,' said a puffing Regal Kowloon Hotel restaurant manager Gavin Caldwell, 32, after the executive race. The Briton and colleague Raymond Chang dressed as Blues Brothers characters Elwood and Jake for the race. Mr Caldwell described their (unsuccessful) team strategy as: 'He runs fast and drops the tray, I run slow and finish.' The pair also spied on competing teams' tactics from their hotel, which overlooks the course.
But it was Chung Kam-ho of the New World Hotel who breezed through, tray elegantly in hand, to win the hotel executives race.
In the international male waiters' race, Spaniard Jordigil Tares, 22, fought fierce competition over the 500-metre course to take second place behind the Island Shangri-La's Leung Man-tat. Mr Tares said he might have done better had he been carrying a beer, not a cup of water.
