Zeal for Olympians dashes HK localists' plot

Sunday was like a carnival for sports fans in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, because the elite Olympians from the national team, who had returned from the Rio Olympic Games, paid a three-day visit to the city, culminating in a number of entertaining shows presented by the athletes .

The warm welcome the Olympians received could be anticipated even before they arrived, as the 5,700 tickets for the three performance events, which went on sale on Aug 22, sold out in just a couple of hours. Some diehard sports enthusiasts had even lined up a day before the tickets went on sale, and tickets with a face value of HK$20 ($2.58), were scalped at over HK$1,000 on the internet!

Nor were Sunday's performances a disappointment for local fans who were lucky enough to grab a ticket. Those who attended were amazed by the sporting prowess of the athletes - fancy routines by the gold-sweeping divers, table tennis world champions Ma Long and Xu Xin playing three balls simultaneously, and badminton star Lin Dan using a badminton racket to play table tennis. The spectators cheered and laughed, reveling in the antics of the nation's sports stars. Hong Kong people's enthusiastic support for athletes of the Chinese national team dates back even before Hong Kong returned to China in 1997. In the early 1980s, when the Chinese women's volleyball team swept the world and won five consecutive world championship titles, Hong Kong people, like their compatriots on the mainland, were over the moon about their marvelous achievements. Whenever there was a final between China and another team, residents in the city grouped around TVs to watch. In 2008 when Beijing held the Summer Olympics, Hong Kong people welcomed the Olympic torch with great zeal, and cheered for the great performance by athletes from the national team at the games.