Hong Kong Olympian Sarah Lee finally confirms cycling retirement, expected to take up coaching role in July
- Rumours have been swirling about the 36-year-old track cyclist’s future for months
- Lee commented publicly for the first time during her graduation ceremony at Baptist University
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Hong Kong’s two-time Olympic medallist Sarah Lee Wai-sze has finally confirmed her retirement from competitive cycling after months of indications that she had wound down her glittering career on the track.
While giving a speech during her graduation ceremony at Baptist University on Monday, the 36-year-old talked about the “end of my cycling life”.
It marked the first time that she had publicly acknowledged the move, despite not having raced competitively since the Japan Cup last summer.
Three times a world champion in the velodrome, Lee’s legacy of sustained success is unmatched in Hong Kong sport.
On her way to becoming the first and only Hongkonger to win medals in two different Olympic Games – bronzes in London and Tokyo – Lee has collected a grand total of 51 global and continental podium finishes.
At the track World Championships, her titles in the 500 metres time-trial, in 2013, and both individual sprint and keirin in 2019, have been accompanied by 500m and keirin silvers in 2016 and 2018, and sprint bronzes in 2013, 2017 and 2020.
Lee had first come to prominence at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, where she won 500m gold as a 23-year-old as well as a bronze in the sprint, two years before winning her first Olympic medal in London by finishing third in the keirin.
Across three Asian Games that also included the editions in Incheon and Jakarta, she has racked up five golds, a silver and a bronze in total, while cycling’s Asian Championships have yielded 19 golds, five silvers and 10 bronzes.
Lee, whose name has not been on the Sports Institute’s list of scholarship athletes since April 1, had begun a master’s programme in creative writing for cultural professionals at the university in September 2017.
Her studies were put on hold because of her cycling, but Lee decided to switch focus after the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, where she beat Emma Hinze of Germany in the sprint bronze medal race.
Olympian Sarah Lee dropped as elite athlete, will not race at Asian Games
Her last major sports event, just weeks after the Olympics, was the National Games of China, in which she won the sprint gold and bronze in the keirin.
Shen Jinkang, head coach of the Hong Kong cycling team, hinted after the International Cup at Hong Kong Velodrome last month that Lee could still attend the Asian Games in Hangzhou this September but not as an athlete, without specifying what role she might play instead.
A move into coaching is expected to be announced by next month.
