Hong Kong’s triathletes produce ‘remarkable’ performance to bag historic team silver at Asia Championships
- Mixed-relay joy for city quartet in as Charlotte Hall leads team to second place
- Japan claim gold, with China finishing third at event in Kazakhstan
Hong Kong’s triathletes bounced back from a bout of food poisoning to bag a first team silver medal in the mixed relay at the Asia Championships in Kazakhstan on Sunday.
The city’s foursome – Jason Ng Tai-long, Hilda Choi Yan-yin, Oscar Coggins, and Charlotte Hall – just held off the challenge of the Chinese team, finishing three seconds ahead in a time of one hour, 28 minutes and 18 seconds.
Japan grabbed gold, finishing more than a minute ahead of their rivals in a time of 1:27.03.
Head coach Andrew Wright hailed his team’s incredible performance, which he said came despite the quartet all being far from 100 per cent fit.
“The athletes raced out of their skin and performed incredibly well,” Wright said. “This is our first silver medal in any relays, and considering the team was not at full strength with illness, this was even more of a remarkable performance.”
Coggins, who was among a number of competitors struck down by food poising on Saturday and missed his individual race, hailed the performance of Choi and Hall, with the latter completing the anchor leg for her team.
“It was a very hard weekend for me,” Coggins said. “I was feeling really good coming into this Asia Championships and was very disappointed to get ill just two days out from the individual race.
“I did everything I could but I was barely able to jog the morning of the individual race [on Saturday] so I was forced to pull out.