Analysis Asian Games 2023: after medal-laden first week, how high can Hong Kong soar in Hangzhou?
- The city’s athletes reached 43 medals with half of the Games still to go, needing only three more to match Hong Kong’s best ever haul, in Jakarta in 2018
- Siobhan Haughey and Cheung Ka-long delivered, but Hong Kong’s squad have also found medals in unlikely places and new stars have emerged to fill sizeable shoes
Halfway through the Asian Games in Hangzhou and the Hong Kong team are flying, marking the first full-week of competition with unprecedented success across a number of sports, record-setting performances and historic achievements.
The city’s athletes have already amassed 43 medals overall – six gold, 15 silver and 22 bronze – just three shy of the total number won at the last Games five years ago in Jakarta.
And while some sports have dropped off the radar since 2018, others have risen to heights barely dreamed of in previous years.
Gold has come for the first time in swimming and golf, it has been retained by the men’s sevens team, and won by rowers and the city’s Olympic champion fencer, Cheung Ka-long.
Siobhan Haughey’s presence has meant records, regional and local, have tumbled in the pool, and her belief that she can go faster still could see them fall further in Paris next year.
Individual success has also come for windsurfers and sailors, cyclists, wushu exponents and equestrians, while silver in esports and bronze for the women’s sevens squad and men’s golfers represented the breaking of new frontiers for all three.