Elite athletes and coaches sent an SOS to Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa yesterday, urging him not to cut their funding and to reconsider proposed changes to the structure of sport in Hong Kong.
They said sports such as badminton, table tennis and windsurfing - which have been designated 'elite' - needed $250 million a year to produce results at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
In an open letter to Mr Tung, more than 100 athletes, including 1996 Olympic gold medalist Lee Lai-shan, also known as San San, said the future of elite sports was in grave danger following a recent review by the Home Affairs Bureau.
The bureau has proposed setting up a streamlined Sports Commission on April 1 to replace the Sports Development Board, which is in charge of elite sports. Seventy of the board's 311 staff have received dismissal letters.
'We urge the chief executive to look into the matter seriously, or we won't be able to win any medals at the forthcoming Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. We may also lose to our counterparts Macau when we host the East Asian Games in 2009,' the athletes and coaches said.
Athletes and coaches, dressed in black, also held a press conference yesterday at the Sports Institute in Sha Tin to highlight their plight.
