HONG KONG canoeists, aiming to emerge from the shadow of their rowing counterparts, have planned their most ambitious training programme yet.
The canoeists and rowers both train on the Shing Mun River in Sha Tin but while the latter have developed into one of the top teams in Asia over the past four years, the paddlers are minnows.
'Our problem is lack of exposure and competition because we seldom send our athletes away for training,' Dick Tam Wai-cheong, senior sports executive of the Hong Kong Canoe Union, said.
The HKCU received backing from the Hong Kong Sports Institute for a full-time coach earlier this year and Hungarian Antal Hajba took up the position four months ago.
Hajba, the 10,000-metre Canadian canoe world champion in 1966, did not have much time to prepare his four-strong kayak squad for the Asian Games and not surprisingly they failed to make it through to the finals.
However, HKCU officials have now set their sights on making an impression at the major regional event in 1995 - the Asian Championships in Sichuan next October.
