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His training venue had been turned into a car park. He failed to qualify for his pet event. He is more an endurance racer than a sprinter. The odds were stacked against Wong Kam-po last night.

But Hong Kong's top cyclist still turned in a creditable performance in the 40-kilometre points race at the Olympic velodrome, finishing 11th in the 160-lap race.

'I'm happy with this result considering I lacked the facilities to train and the amount of time I had to prepare for this event,' said Wong.

Wong only had six months to prepare for the track event as he had pinned his hopes on taking part in the road race for which he failed to qualify.

Karl Kwok, the leader of the Hong Kong delegation, described the race beforehand as Wong's 'biggest challenge'. And so it proved to be as Spain's Juan Llaneras won the gold medal, with Uruguay's Milton Wynants taking silver and Alexey Markov of Russia the bronze.

'He had no proper facilities to train in Hong Kong. The Sports Development Board had turned the velodrome at the Sports Institute in Sha Tin into a car park,' said Kwok in a direct swipe at the SAR's elite training facility. 'He had to go overseas to train.'

Wong, 27, has had an impressive career. And that has revolved around road racing, his favourite event. In 1997, he was crowned champion at the Chinese National Games and also became the first foreigner to win the Marlboro Tour of the Philippines. In 1998, he won the gold medal in the Bangkok Asian Games road race.

He was hoping to take part in Sydney alongside the likes of Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong in the road race. But his hopes were dashed when he failed to qualify at the 1999 World Championship in Uruguay. Instead, he won the points race in the B final and earned a berth in Sydney in a track event.

However, Wong gave a spirited performance, coming up against opponents who had been primed under expert guidance for the past few years. 'We hired an expert track coach from South Korean to train Wong. But since coming to Sydney he has not been able to enter the velodrome as he does not have the proper accreditation,' said Hong Kong head coach Shen Jinkang.

The 160-lap race was peppered with sprint laps, 16 of them, during which the riders gave it their all to gain the points which mattered towards the aggregate score.

Wong's performance can be highly rated simply due to the fact that he was the second-highest Asian rider to finish in the 23-strong field. South Korea's top sprinter Cho Ho-sung finished fourth overall. 'I didn't expect to finish so high up. I hope I can do better, but I will focus mainly on road racing,' said Wong who hopes to join an European racing team next year.



Gutsy Wong holds his head high