Coach pushes the boat out for adaptive rowers

As he watched the athletes head up to the podium to collect their medals, rowing coach Victor Lee Chi-yung struggled to hold back the tears. Under the guidance of Lee and his team, Hong Kong took one silver in the mixed coxed four and bronze medals in the men’s, women’s and the mixed double skulls at the 2010 Asian Para Games in Guangzhou.

Masterminding a weighty medal haul was no easy task. The team’s gruelling training regime on the water, combined with the varying degrees of disabilities among his squad, made it an incredible feat for a team formed under the auspices of the Beijing Olympic Games legacy.

“It’s not about me being successful, I’m just doing my job,” says Lee.

Lee has spent hundreds of hours on the water in a career of coaching and nurturing young alent. But his focus gradually turned to disabled, adaptive rowers, when the opportunity arose.

Five years of early starts and late finishes for Lee reaped big dividends, after he was approached to take on a job that had no targets or expectations to produce medal hauls.

As coach, his typical daily schedule - repeated up to six times a week - looked like this: 5am – wake-up call, 6am – at the rowing centre ready to train his athletes;8.30am – breakfast; 10am – outreach work with first school; 1pm – lunch; 2pm – outreach work with second school and 7pm – till late in the evening training for adaptive rowers.