Hong Kong’s Stephanie Au relishing her new role as team mentor as she strikes gold again in Ashgabat

Stephanie Au Hoi-shun is shifting her focus towards next year’s Asian Games in Jakarta after her gold medal-winning performance in the short course swimming at the Asian Indoor Games on Sunday evening continued Hong Kong’s successful showing in Turkmenistan.

Au won gold in the 100 metres backstroke in a time of 58.94 seconds to finish 0.22 seconds ahead of Chinese duo Yang Yifan and Jiang Yuru despite misreading her finish at the end of the four length discipline.

It was the third gold medal in three days for Hong Kong’s female swimmers following victory in the 4x50m medley relay on Friday and Chan Kin-lok’s win in the 100m butterfly the following day.

Those results place Hong Kong in third place in the swimming medal table with one day of competition remaining.

“I had a bad finish on the first leg of the relay, too, so there’s room for improvement,” said Au after picking up her fourth medal of the games. “That gives me something I can work on ahead of the Asian Games next year, that will be a big goal for us.”

Au had already won gold in the medley relay and a silver in the 4x100m freestyle relay before being part of the 4x50m freestyle relay that lost out to China on Sunday evening by just 0.10 seconds.

Hesitation in the changeovers cost Hong Kong the gold and Au is determined to not allow those issues to affect the team in the future.