ProfileHong Kong’s first Olympic gold medallist, Lee Lai-shan, on her biggest challenge – raising a family – and giving up windsurfing
- Lee Lai-shan, popularly known as San San, grew up in a big, poor but happy family on Cheung Chau and took up windsurfing at 12 years old because it ‘looked fun’
- After winning a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics, then retiring from the sport, she found raising two young daughters was just as tough, she tells Kate Whitehead
Eight in a bed: I come from a big family – my mum had 10 kids and I’m the eighth child. I was born in Cheung Chau in 1970. We were a very poor family. My dad passed away when I was eight and my mum had to look after all of us. She wasn’t well educated and mostly did general labour work. My three eldest sisters left school to help earn money for the family. I also did my bit.
My mum and sisters took in work making jewellery at home and I’d help them after I’d finished my homework. We all lived in a 700 sq ft flat – 10 kids with my mother and grandmother. My uncle made a very large bed and me and my seven sisters slept on it.
Try, try again: As kids our entertainment was either running or swimming in the sea. One day when I was 12, it was too windy to swim, so I watched the windsurfers going really fast, it looked fun. My uncle, Lai Kam, had set up a windsurf centre-cum-cafe on the island and I asked him if he’d teach me. He agreed on condition I spent the summer holiday working at his cafe; he wanted to make sure that I was committed to learning.
After a summer of washing dishes and serving customers, finally, it was my chance to learn and he tied a board to an anchor and kept an eye on me from the cafe. The windsurfing equipment in those days was really heavy, and the board was slippery; whenever I tried to pick up the sail I fell off and had trouble getting back up.
After half an hour I was really tired and wanted to give up. I sat on the board and thought how I’d spent the summer working towards this opportunity, and I didn’t want to waste it, so I stood up and tried again. When my uncle saw me practising non-stop for 90 minutes, he knew I was serious about wanting to learn and taught me step by step.