Door open for Hong Kong to stage Asian track cycling championships

A new format for the Asian Cycling Championships has opened the door for Hong Kong to bid for the regional showpiece.

From 2017, the Asian Cycling Confederation will no longer require that the track and road race competitions of their flagship event be staged concurrently in the same location.

Even with the opening of the Tseung Kwan O velodrome in 2013, Hong Kong could not consider bidding to host the championships because traffic restrictions prevented the staging of the road races. Now the state of the art velodrome becomes an attractive prospective venue for the track events.

"Staging the Asian championships has been our long-time wish, since Hong Kong has been very active in the regional event," said Hong Kong Cycling Association chairman Leung Hung-tak.

"For more than 50 years, both the track and road race competitions have been held in a single country. It's almost impossible for Hong Kong to stage them because the road races last for four or five days with both senior and junior competitions and the authorities would never allow us to close the roads for so long.

"But from 2017, we can stage just the track events and with the facilities in Tseung Kwan O, we are hopeful of bringing the event to Hong Kong. Of course, we have to solve the financial side because it is a big event involving more than 20 countries."

Hong Kong has been a force to be reckoned with in the regional competition and they won three gold medals, six silver and one bronze on the track and one gold and two bronze on the road in this year's championships in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, that ended last week.

The competition in Thailand was used by the Hong Kong team as a springboard for the world championships that start in Paris today.