HO, Kim Fai Fay

With a life-long passion for sports, and an elite career spanning 15 years, Fay was the first athlete to represent Hong Kong at two different sports at the Olympic Games – Canoeing in Los Angeles (1984) and Rowing in Barcelona (1992).

 

She began playing table tennis from a very young age, but quickly found her love for water sports after regular trips with her parents to swim at local beaches. After joining swimming and lifesaving clubs, she quickly progressed to canoeing – starting regular training from 1981 and achieving selection in the K1 and K2 sprints for the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984.

 

In 1986, a chance meeting with newly arrived Head Coach Chris Perry led her to try rowing and in 1988 she joined the Hong Kong Rowing Squad as one the first group of Scholarship Athletes at the Jubilee Sports Centre (now the Hong Kong Sports Institute).

 

In 1989, Fay won the first-ever Asian Championship medal in rowing for Hong Kong – a bronze in Chandigarh, India. Then, in 1992 she attended her second Olympic Games in Barcelona. This was followed by a gold medal at the East Asian Games in Shanghai in 1993 and a silver medal at the Asian Games in Hiroshima in 1994.

 

During her long rowing career Fay won numerous regional and international medals until her retirement in 1996 after narrowly missing Olympic qualification for Atlanta with Hong Kong’s second double Olympian – Fenella Ng.

 

After hanging up her oars as a full-time elite athlete however Fay has continued to devote herself to sport, serving on a wide range of sports and community organizations - both locally and internationally. Professionally she has held the posts of Secretary General of the Hong Kong Schools Sports Federation, Executive Director of Hong Kong Sports Association for the Mentally Handicapped and National Director for Special Olympics.

 

In 2006 she was appointed Chair of the International Rowing Federation’s Para Rowing Commission and has been responsible for overseeing the development of para rowing internationally from its first inclusion in the Paralympic Games in Beijing (2008) until the Tokyo Olympics. She is now a Council Member of the International Federation – World Rowing - in her capacity as Continental Representative for Asia. She is also Deputy Secretary General of the Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China and the first female Vice President of the Asian Rowing Federation.