Paris Olympics: meet the 73kg, 1.76m Hong Kong rower aiming to surprise European giants
- ‘Asians are smaller, but we could beat them in terms of technique, and outsmart them,’ Chiu Hin-chun says
Hong Kong rower Chiu Hin-chun has billed his second Olympic appearance at this year’s Paris Games as a David-versus-Goliath affair.
The 29-year-old will compete in the open weight class, instead of his usual lightweight category, in the French capital’s eastern outskirts on July 27, a day after the opening ceremony.
That will require him to summon the maximum output from a body weighing 73kg (161lbs) and measuring 1.76 metres (5ft 9in) tall, but Chiu plans to bulk up a little as he seeks his optimal size against bigger rivals.
The plan is to aim for 76kg during training then be 75kg when he takes to the water at the National Olympic Nautical Stadium, based partly on events at last year’s Asian Games, at which Chiu won bronze.
“I lost by 0.76 seconds [to Ryuta Arakawa of Japan],” he said. “If I weighed more then, I could have kept up.