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RA BẮC VÀO NAM I've been around the world. Yeah' Yeah' ^_^ DEC 02 Minority-dominated sport toils on uneven playing field Leave a Comment Minority-dominated sport toils on uneven playing field By Winnie Shuai, Dzung D. Khuu and Helen Hu Student – Reporter HONG KONG _ In the torch relay for China National Games in Hong Kong in October, thousands of fans saw an unusual face among the five torch-bearers representing Hong Kong. Arif Ali, 28, the field-hockey player, with tan skin, brown hair and deep eyes, is clearly not ethnic Chinese. “I’m a lucky one,” Ali said, reminiscing the “good feeling” as he represented seven million people in Hong Kong. He holds a Hong Kong permanent identity card, speaks Cantonese and loves dim sum: Ali is like the majority of Hong Kongers. However, while he competes under the flag of Hong Kong, he is also a “Hong Kong-born foreigner” who plays for a minority-dominated sport that suffers a serious lack of financial support. “The East Asian Games is only ten days away, we still haven’t got the team clothes and physical therapist,” Kelson Wong, one of the only five Chinese teammates of Ali, said. “The hockey ground can only be used three times a week for two hours and a half each time. Our situation is very difficult.” Hockey was brought to Hong Kong as traditional sports by Pakistanis and Indians, who have been living in Hong Kong since the British colonial rule in 1841. “My parents brought me to this game when I was only six, in order to acquaint me the Pakistani culture,” said Ali, whose parents came to Hong Kong in 1972 from a village near Pakistan’s Faisalabad city. Hong Kong Hockey National team has 16 members, including nine Pakistanis, two Indians and five Chinese. It operates under Hong Kong Hockey Association (HKHA), which was found in 1933. At that time there were 150 club teams, both men and women, with some 2,500 players. Hockey became an official game in 1951. Since then, it’s under Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China. After 76 years of history, the sports participation shrinks to 28 teams with 400 hockey players. And the national team used to rank 7 in Asia and 30 in the world in 2006. Now it stays on 50th in the world ranking. The team did not take part in the 2008 Olympic Games qualifying matches even though it was invited by the organizer. The absence can affect the ranking more seriously than a bad result in competition. Billy Dillon, 58, an Indian expatriate and the vice-president of HKHA, said the problem of “no sponsorship” was a big obstacle in the way. “The government does give money to us but very little and far more enough,” Dillon stated. He told that the only way to save money for such matches was from club fee, but athletes complained a lot about raising fee. “The government grants money to sports associations according to their performances,” Chen Jianhua, the senior sports journalist of South China Morning Post said. “Little money means it’s hard to get good results; less good result means less chance to get support from government.” He added, “That’s a problem about chicken and egg, which exists first.” “Money is the thing we need most,” Dillon said. “If we have no money, we can’t get good coaches; if we can’t get good coaches, we can’t get good athletes.” But the government holds its own view. “No difference, no discrimination, they have to meet the same criteria for competing for Hong Kong. The policy is fair, all the athletes are equal in the arena,” said Leung Mee Lee, the Deputy Secretary General of Sports Federation of Olympic Committee of Hong Kong. Field hockey has never been in the “elite sports” program, launched by the government for assured government support. “They should prove they are strong first,” she added. Without expectation of initial governmental support, the athletes have to solve the obstacles themselves. Ali and his teammates use their full-time job to support their part-time training three times a week. Ali works as a full-time coach and also assists in training his own team. His siblings, also his teammates — Ashghar, Akhbar and Asif Ali — run a car repair garage which is the main income of their three-generation family of ten. Targeting at the bronze medal, Arif Ali and his teammates are preparing for the East Asian Games in early December. “The government will give reward to us for the medal,” Dillon said, “then things will be better.”