A sixth Olympic medal to add to Cheung Ka-long’s fencing gold, Haughey’s haul and bronze medals from the women’s table tennis team and karateka Grace Lau Mo-sheung, will have the Hong Kong mission to Tokyo in dreamland. At no point in the build-up to these delayed Games was the notion of six podium finishes even entertained.

Now, Lee is potentially two sprint races away from another guaranteed silver medal and a place in history as Hong Kong’s first multi-Olympic medal winner.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor praised Lee for her performance in a Facebook post on Saturday night.

“It has demonstrated her self-confidence and explosive power, this will surely lift the spirit of all Hongkongers,” Lam said, adding she planned to watch Lee race on Sunday morning with Lam Tai-fai, chairman of the Sports Institute.

The doubters suspected that the delayed start to the 2020 Games was a year too long for the 34-year-old Lee. She was consistently the world’s best female sprinter from 2019 through 2020, but the dearth of competition in the past 12 months looked to have had an atrophying affect on her Olympic preparations.

Add to that her less than convincing start to the week in the keirin campaign – requiring a repechage to come through the first round before bowing out at the semi-final stage and managing an eighth-place finish – and the smart money was on her bowing out tamely in the sprint against a youthful field of up-and-coming talent.

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Her coach Shen Jinkang admitted on Friday evening that“her progress was a bit scary” after requiring a repechage to advance past the last-32 stage of the sprint after being comfortably beaten by Great Britain’s Rio 2016 bronze medallist Katy Marchant.

Lee later defeated USA’s Madalyn Godby to ensure her involvement into the weekend, but still appeared unlikely to challenge for the podium.

Saturday was a different story altogether. First, the three-time world champion moved into the last-eight with an impressive victory against rising French star Mathilde Gros, drawing on all her experience and power to pip the 21-year-old on the line.

There were concerns when Lee was paired again with Marchant in the quarter-finals, but Lee displayed her best attributes in the victory: timing and power in the race one win, before a perfect demonstration of tactical acumen to take the second.

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On Sunday, Lee faces Ukraine’s Olena Starikova in a repeat of the Hong Kong leg of the 2019 World Cup series, when Lee defeated the 25-year-old 2-0 in the best-of-three semi-final clash before going on to land the title.

“The race will be about explosive power, tactics and how the rider adjusts to the environment,” Shen said. “It will be a big challenge for Lee. There will be pressure, of course, but an experienced rider like Lee knows how to turn pressure into motivation.”

Coincidentally, the other semi-final that day featured the same line-up as Sunday when Germany’s Emma Hinze took on Canada’s Kelsey Mitchell, with the German winning 2-0.

Lee is by some distance the most experienced rider left in the field, but Shen thinks her victory on Saturday showed she still has the physical capacity to claim a medal.

“She was able to beat Katy Marchant twice today after losing to the British rider yesterday,” Shen said. “This proves she can adjust her form and tactics in the races to come.”